


raise your hopeful voice

by Regency



Category: Holby City
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Historical, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Falling In Love, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Internalized Homophobia, Light Angst, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Sexism, Post-World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:42:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21923107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Regency/pseuds/Regency
Summary: Post-WWII AU. After the War, everything changes. Former army medic Bernie Wolfe struggles to adjust to home life after spending ages overseas treating the injured and dying on the front lines. Newly separated civilian surgeon Serena Campbell fights efforts to ‘put her back in her place’ once her male colleagues return from military service abroad. A chance encounter amid Holby’s bitter winter frost births an unlikely friendship and an even more unlikely love affair.
Relationships: Serena Campbell/Bernie Wolfe
Comments: 29
Kudos: 88
Collections: Berena Secret Santa 2019





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spilled_notes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spilled_notes/gifts).



> Written with love for Berena Secret Santa 2019. For tea-and-procrastination who requested a ‘soft vintage AU’. I had approximately six ideas for this and finally settled on this one. I hope you enjoy it. And please forgive me for the delay. I’m not sure I’ve been on time for anything in my life. I apologize in advance for any historical inaccuracies. I did plenty of research but went with whatever was simplest or most familiar to Holby canon to avoid much confusion. Let’s call it artistic license.

* * *

_Only love and death change all things._

**– _Sand and Foam_ by Kahlil Gibran –**

* * *

_Winter 1946_

Holby City

Everything changed after the War.

D-Day came and went but the fighting continued. The dying continued. Nazi Germany fell, and so did atomic bombs, care of the United States, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki four months later. The bombs alone killed up to a quarter of a million Japanese people, mostly civilians. The Third Reich killed untold millions. The War killed untold millions.

World War II concluded, nominally, on September 2, 1945. The world would never be the same.

The war ended but the dying continued.

The suffering continued.

The rationing continued.

It was a year before soldiers began returning home, and when they did Captain Berenice Wolfe, battlefield surgeon in The British Army, was reluctantly among them. Bernie went from organizing field hospital units and liaising with the Women’s Transport Service carrying injured combatants and vital military intelligence to attending women’s fundraising luncheons at the Holby Women’s Institute and organizing appropriate daytime outings for her young children between shifts at St. James’ hospital. Life at home was very different war, and she hadn’t the first idea how she was meant to fight it, if she should fight it at all.

She was home now, deep in the heart of the biting Holby City winter, overseeing the care and feeding of her growing children. This was everything she had fought and come close to dying for many times. Knowing this did nothing to stop her wanting to march to the hospital and demand a complex surgery to scrub into. Bernie was tired of thinking; there was altogether too much to be thinking about, to be remembering. Hell was behind and on her shoulders and in her head. That wasn’t where she wanted to live. Over there.

Bernie flicked open her silver-plated cigarette case to retrieve a cork-tipped Craven ‘A’. She hesitated to light it, caught up watching Charlotte squeal as she soared down the tall slide at the center of the playground.

Five months back from the last of the fighting and mending, Bernie still felt out of place in her vermeil gold jewelry and her utility suit and fascinator, more suited to a uniform of trousers, boots, and a military jacket meant to keep out the worst of the rain, or even the scrubs she wore in the mobile hospitals she’d commanded. Bernie wasn’t meant for civilian life. She was never more certain of this than when she was alone with her children. Had she ever been so innocent of the horrors of the world?

“Is anyone sitting here?”

Bernie cast her eyes toward the fair-skinned woman addressing her, instinctively taking her measure. She was brunette, brown-eyed, and buxom; buttoned up in a navy box coat, adorned at the notched lapel with a pristine Bakelite brooch, and a wine-red beret sat at a daring angle atop her head. A knitted scarf befitting the weather was looped round her neck and tucked into her coat. She wasn’t injured. ~~She was beautiful.~~ She was fine. They would all be fine. The War was won. _Can a war with so many casualties be won?_

The woman raised her eyebrows when Bernie didn’t respond.

“Sorry, were you speaking to me?”

“Yes, I was asking if it all right for me to sit.”

“Please, by all means.” Bernie gestured for the other woman to join her on the iron park bench, waving her unlit cigarette about. “I’m having a smoke, you don’t mind, do you?”

“It’s nothing I can’t live with.”

Bernie permitted herself a hasty smoke, and as promised, her companion didn’t complain. If anything, she seemed envious of Bernie’s chosen vice.

“Care for a smoke?”

“No, no, I gave it up years ago, but thank you.” She spoke in dulcet tones reminiscent of a habitual smoker and whiskey drinker. Bernie was reminded of a woman she used to know.

“Fair enough.”

Bernie’s children, Cameron and Charlotte, continued to make merry with the other little ones in their winter finery. Though it was too cold for the children to play outside for long this close to Christmas, Bernie had conceded when confronted with a matching pair of sad brown eyes pleading for room to roam. She had missed her two beyond measure during the War; she only wanted to see them happy now.

“I bet I can guess which are yours,” said the other woman, apropos of nothing.

“I’ll take that bet.”

“The snow-streaked princess in blue and the princeling doting on her.” Sure enough, Cameron stood waiting at the foot of the slide to catch his baby sister as she landed and ushered her swiftly back to the ladder to go again.

“How could you tell?”

“The boy has your eyes and the girl your hair.” The well-dressed lady gave mother and daughter further considering glances. “And your nose, if I don’t miss my guess.”

“Poor dear.”

“It’s a fine nose,” the woman defended on Bernie’s behalf. “Lends character.”

“It’s too long,” Bernie muttered, echoing her mother’s despairing refrain from girlhood.

“Not at all, and whoever’s said so can keep their monstrous opinions to themselves.”

“It was my mother.”

“Say no more. Mothers are notoriously difficult.” She clicked her teeth. Bernie made a wordless noise of agreement. “I still contend she’s wrong. You’re as lovely as they come.”

Bernie looked at her sidelong. Her face was open as the bright, grey sky conveying not an ounce of intrigue. “Thank you. Shouldn’t I know the name of my nose’s staunchest defender?”

The dark-haired women laughed. “Serena Campbell.”

“Bernie Wolfe. Berenice properly, I suppose, but I prefer Bernie.”

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Bernie.”

They exchanged a genial handshake. Serena had a sure, firm grip Bernie admired after an age of shaking the hands of overbearing men in and out of uniform. They settled closer on the bench now they were no longer women thrown together by public inconvenience.

“I reckon I can guess which of those rabble rousers is yours as well.”

“I expect you can. Do your worst.”

Bernie took in the dozen-odd children at play on the snowy park grounds. Excluding her own, there was a roughly even split of boys and girls running amok in the Winter Wonderland that was Holby’s early snowfall. After a couple of false starts, she zeroed in on a clutch of girls building higgledy piggledy snowmen under the supervision of a petite girl no older than Charlotte, attired in a chic cream coat over her holly leaf green frock with a matching knit cap utterly failing to keep her auburn tresses in order. Her direct, vociferous voice was audible across the play area.

“I can see from your face you’ve spotted her. Elinor’s not an easy girl to overlook.” She indicated another child, a boy, keeping to himself at the heart of a rapidly growing snow fort. “That’s Jason, my nephew. He’s lived with us since my sister took ill last year. I suppose he always will now.” She must have passed, thought Bernie, and she thought better than to ask. There had been so much death, it didn’t do to dwell, or one might never see the sun again.

“Yours going stir crazy indoors too.”

“Ah no, I was the guilty party this once. I couldn’t bear to pass another minute staring at the same four walls. It was the park or a day trip to my mother-in-law’s.” Even the words had a chilling effect on burning.

“My, you are desperate.”

“You have no idea.”

From there, Bernie and Serena hit it off like wild fire. Weren’t mothers-in-law the absolute limit? Weren’t husbands? They laughed over Bernie dodging Marcus’s requests about the dinner party he’d like to throw by reminding him they employed a housekeeper for a reason. They found they had more than mildly aggravating in-laws in common, but a profession. Two surgeons, days out of theater and looking with trepidation toward the holidays to come. Bernie specializing in trauma and Serena in vascular surgery. It was a wonder to find someone who understood how Bernie thought without condescending to her. Even seeing her in action, many of her male colleagues at St. Francis’ thought her survival rate an unending run of good fortune rather than learned experience on display.

Not Serena.

“I tell you, nothing less than raising the dead will convince a chauvinist you haven’t simply batted your lashes and asked nicely for the patient to live. It’s galling.”

“I try to ignore it and let me work do the talking. Arguing doesn’t get me anywhere.” That had been her fathers’ advice—'if you insist on putting your shoulder to the mountain in the hopes of it moving, keep your head down, your mouth shut, and _push_.’ That had worked in the theater of war. Less now she was back in England and hamstrung by what her colleagues believe she _should_ do now she’d shed her combat boots.

“That’s where you and I differ, Bernie. I love a good spat. Regardless of whether I’ve changed their mind, I know I’ve been heard.” She eyed Bernie’s rapidly dwindling cigarette. “Could I?”

Bernie passed it along.

Serena took a therapeutic inhale of the remaining smoke and held it in her lungs. She then exhaled with a sensuous moan not out of place in one of those lurid pulp novels Bernie could never admit to having read. The air around them was momentarily obscured with the haze of their smoky breath. The cold had no place her, piercing as it tried to be, digging in at their bones and Bernie’s particular aches.

When she was done, Bernie took the cigarette back from her and finished it off with a final, burning puff and stubbed it out in the snow. She retrieved gum from her pocket, from habit, a holdover from her emergency field kit from before. Always be prepared to be unprepared. She extended a stick of the pale green gum to Serena. They chewed companionably.

 _She’s even pretty when she chews,_ Bernie thought, glib. This was that feeling she’d sworn to ward herself against on returning to Holby. That instant affinity that exceeded kinship, an attraction bordering on kinetic she hadn’t once felt for a man. Not even Marcus when they were young lovers, and everything should have been heart-stopping.

“I know it’s a terrible habit. Marcus complaints about the way my hair smells, or my clothes. He says I make the furniture reek of tobacco.” The housekeeper groused about it as well and Bernie had taken to sneaking out to the back garden to smoke her fill when the house grew oppressive.

“Don’t tell me, he says it isn’t ladylike?” Her inflection smacked of shared experience. Someone had told Serena she wasn’t woman enough. Bernie would have gladly bought tickets to that prize fight to see them decimated.

“He doesn’t like the taste.” Bernie hadn’t thought to complain about how Alex tasted. She’d been too overawed to have her, to be allowed to be had by her. Marcus, she thought, would have complained.

Serena shrugged and that wasn’t very ladylike either by Marcus’s estimation, or the estimation of his equally opinionated mother. “You aren’t an hors d’oeuvre, you aren’t meant to be ready for his consumption any hour on the hour, and I do mean that in the Biblical sense as well.”

Bernie sputtered between barks of laughter. It had been a good, long while since another woman had sprung innuendo on her so audaciously. The rules that had poured the rambunctious, busy, tree-climbing girl Bernie used to be into the upright woman of a certain class she was had bore in on her for four months and seventeen days, since she had stepped off the military transport that had brought her back to her native shores. For a moment, they didn’t press quite as hard.

Serena sat back, shapely legs neatly crossed, an arm extended behind Bernie along the back of the bench. She appeared supremely pleased to have shocked a laugh out of Bernie.

“Has anybody told you you’re a riot, Serena Campbell?”

“Hardly. I’ve seen riots. No, I’m a barn-burning party no one of any standing should ever attend but everybody wants to see. Watch out you don’t stand too close to me.”

“I’m not afraid of a little fire.” She had slept through it and driven into it. She had carried people out of it on her back.

“I’m anything but little.” Serena tapped Bernie’s hand where it sat clutching her knee. “You’ll see.”

Not twenty meters off, young Jason cried out in the ruins of his fort. Both women spun to see him raking a sizable splattering of crunching snow from his nose and chest. Elinor’s cabal scattered around her, leaving her damp-mittened and guilty of expression. She was already running to him to make her excuses.

“Jason, Jason, don’t cry. I didn’t mean it, honest!”

“Oh dear, I think that’s my cue to play mother and kiss it better.” Serena leveraged herself off the bench. “It was good meeting you.”

“And you. Take care of yourself,” Bernie said, echoing the well wishes she’d sent her ambulance drivers and nurses as they saddled up to dive into the worst skirmishes in search of survivors.

Serena winked, almost like she knew what it was Bernie was meaning to say. “You too, Bernie. I hope to see you around.”

Bernie saluted, unwilling to admit she rather hoped she’d see Serena too.

* * *

Bernie thought of Serena often over the ensuing days despite knowing better. A sparkling woman with whom she shared much in common. They lived in the same town and shared the same profession. Had the same number of children. They even spoke the same language, in passion and in politics. She could be the friend Bernie had neglected to find in these many months, someone to relate to, to keep from feeling like a stranger traversing a strange land in disguise when she was only walking home.

But only if Bernie were cautious. If she erected boundaries and maintained them. No more chance meetings in the park, or shared cigarettes where Bernie almost tasted the other woman’s lipstick on the filter. No more of Serena’s arm outstretched behind her, gloved fingers not quite flitting under her coat collar. The gesture had been friendly and unobtrusive yet had set Bernie’s heart to racing, her stomach to roiling. It wasn’t that Bernie had never had a woman as a friend before, it was that friendship alone didn’t explain the emotion Serena had made her feel from the moment they met. That feeling was costly. It was—it _could_ be dangerous. Once it had nearly cost Bernie all she had.

That didn’t keep some rogue part of her from wishing they’d meet again despite having no real hope they would. Though by no means comparable to London, Holby was a large enough city that the odds of their paths crossing were slim. Once in a lifetime was pure chance, she was sure. Therefore, when she spotted an unmistakable silhouette strolling down the aisle of her local grocery not a week on, she was entirely floored.

Once was chance but twice? Twice had meaning.

Serena’s chestnut hair was unadorned but for a splash of silk flowers behind her ear. Elinor and Jason trawled the shelves on either side of the aisle voicing their requests in heated competition. Though Jason’s nose appeared slightly bruised, the boy seemed in good spirits otherwise. Serena’s response to their demands was inaudible but for her raucous laughter. The children negotiated vociferously over who deserved what, inasmuch as there was choice to be had save for what continued rationing guidelines permitted.

Cameron yanked on Bernie’s coattails. “Mummy, I’m hungry.”

“I know, sweetheart, we won’t be long. I promise.” She called out when Serena was just turning onto the produce aisle, in a bid to catch her before she disappeared, “Serena!”

Serena turned slowly, as if assessing whether she wanted to engage her caller. When she recognized Bernie, she brightened immediately. Her lips were wine red. “As I live and breathe. Bernie Wolfe, fancy seeing you again.”

Bernie hurried the children down the aisle to meet Serena’s shopping party. “It’s a small world. I didn’t realize we frequented the same places. I’ve never seen you here.” Bernie grimaced internally. Until recently Bernie had been in Germany treating traumatized prisoners of war. She couldn’t have seen Serena anyplace.

“I haven’t been in Holby in a very long time. I’m still remembering my way around. It’s all so much different than it used to be.” The shelves were barer. The lines longer. The clothes plainer. The streets emptier.

“Seems everything is.”

“All the more reason to hold onto friendly faces wherever we find them, hmm?” She patted Bernie’s arm, dissolving her maudlin digression. This was luck, she wouldn’t ruin it navel-gazing.

“I’d toast that.” She saw Serena’s shopping trolley was close to full compared to her own devoid of a single necessary item for the pantry. “I’ll tell you what. I’m taking the children home for an early lunch after our trip. You should join us, all of you.”

“I wouldn’t like to intrude.” Serena put a quelling hand on Elinor’s shoulder when she and Jason began to quietly grapple over a box of easy-to-make porridge.

“It wouldn’t be intruding if I’m inviting you. There’s plenty of food to go around.” Bernie hoped there was. She hadn’t spoken to the housekeeper about expecting guests, but Mrs. Vesper was known to go quite overboard to keep the family fed. Bernie was sure it was an unspoken censure of Bernie’s refusal to take up the culinary mantle. She didn’t care to cook when there were surgeries to be performed and students to teach; that’s was why they’d taken on a housekeeper in the first place.

“If you’re sure…we’d love to join you, wouldn’t we, children?” Jason cocked his head as if contemplating his response. Elinor nodded gamely. Finally, Jason hummed. Serena took both as agreement.

“I just remembered, we’ve taken a taxi. I could give you our address! Or, or we could share.” Bernie shifted in her heels, wishing she weren’t so eager to break her own self-imposed rules already.

“Perish the thought! We’ll take my car; there’s room enough. Finish your purchases and we’ll meet you outside. It’s a chilly day but nothing a warm drive won’t solve.”

A quarter of an hour later, a gleaming black and red Austin Sixteen four-door saloon rolled up to Bernie and her children outside the entrance to the grocery. It was Serena behind the wheel.

“Going my way?” she asked, smiling. Bernie smiled back, bewildered but pleased. She felt not dissimilar to a girl being picked up for a night at the cinema. Little Elinor waved from the backseat, bouncing in her eagerness. Jason remained quiet but amiable in his watchfulness.

“Mummy,” Cameron exclaimed, “look at the car!” Cameron was reaching the age where all things mechanical fascinated him. If it wasn’t cars, it was planes or trains. They’d expended a small fortune replacing all the clocks he’d dismantled in the house. Their disfigured toaster would never brown a slice of the National Loaf again.

“I see it. Isn’t it pretty?” Serena, Bernie contended, was all the prettier, by far.

Serena got out to meet them. “It’s my ex—my husband’s darling. I swear sometimes he loves it more than me.”

They packed away their groceries, putting as many in the boot as would go and having the children patiently—ha! —hold remainder in the rear seat compartment whilst they took the front.

“I’m sure that isn’t true.”

“Stranger things.” Serena started the engine. “Now, show me the way to the illustrious Wolfe residence?”

“Dunn.”

“Pardon?”

“It’s Dunn. I never took Marcus’s name.”

“Ah, well, why would you? Bernie Dunn is an unfortunate name, if you don’t mind me saying.”

“Between the two of us, I agree with you. Don’t tell my husband I said that.”

Serena tapped a finger over her captivating lips. “Not a peep.” She winked.

Bernie chuckled, knowing already in their brief acquaintance that Serena was anything but liable to keep her lips sealed when there was the mickey to be taken out.

“That’ll be the day. Drive.”

Bernie gave her directions to their somewhat cramped semi-detached house on the outskirts of Holby City and directed her where to park on the street. The children tumbled out onto the slushy pavement, already fast friends. Jason was regaling Cameron with historical facts he’d gleaned from the books he’d taken out from the library whilst Elinor was delineating all her favorite sweets for Charlotte who’d had very few in her time in the care of her grandparents during the War. Mrs. Dunn could be rather severe when it came to what indulgences she considered appropriate for a young girl.

Bernie and Serena toted Bernie’s shopping inside. Considering the cold, there was little concern Serena’s wouldn’t keep.

Mrs. Vesper greeted the greatly expanded shopping party at the door, gathering coats and hats and gloves from all and sundry in turn. Bernie was pleased to set aside her snood and leather gloves. She felt like a play actor in trappings when she went out most days. With Jason’s permission, Bernie liberated him of his cap and scarf. He kept his earmuffs on as they made his ears feel quite snug, he said.

Beside them, Serena shed her fur-lined trench coat in favor of a neat white blouse, inset with lace, and pleated A-line skirt. Bernie averted her eyes from how the hem swayed with the swing of Serena’s hips when she walked. Bernie removed her own coat, determining it was to blame for her sudden flush and fluster.

She released the rambunctious children in the playroom upstairs and adjourned to the lounge with Serena for tea and biscuits while they awaited lunch. Mrs. Vesper had been a touch waspish at being informed there would be additional mouths to feed and account for at lunch.

Serena stretched an arm across the back of the sofa they were sharing and leaned toward Bernie. Bernie found reason to dig up her apocryphal packet of cigarettes from the coffee table. Marcus didn’t like it when Bernie smoked in the house. Bernie couldn’t go to the back garden just now. Serena wasn’t there.

“Let me ask you something?”

Bernie shook out a single and lit it. Serena still looked envious.

“Something else?”

Serena inclined her divoted chin.

“Go on.”

“You were part of the war effort, weren’t you?”

“Am I that obvious?”

“To someone who knows what to look for, you are.”

Bernie tapped the ash from the tip of her cigarette into an ashtray Marcus would sometimes use to dispense with cigar ash. Tobacco was a gentleman’s indulgence in this house.

“I was a medic. Started as an ambulance driver for the WTS and then they realized my skills were better used elsewhere. I took over the field hospital when my superior was killed and did my best to put our soldiers back together.” It hadn’t only been soldiers. The danger with the war was that it respected no boundaries. Civilians were as likely to be targeted as military assets and when civilians in the form of assembling work force became military assets, carnage was an inevitable result. When civilians became collateral damage and then primary targets for simply existing, it was difficult to say there was any winning to be had at all.

“What about you?” There was a way about Serena that spoke of war. Not the way the entire world did anymore, where everyone she met was yet surprised to have lived through what millions hadn’t survived. Serena had somehow been in the thick of it. “You couldn’t have been in the army. I would have heard of you.”

“Not army, no. Erm, what with Elinor being so young and having little in the way of close family, I remained local, treating returning service personnel and doing what could be done on the home front between marathon theater rotations. I was WVS.” The Women’s Voluntary Service had kept alive many a man, woman, and child who might otherwise have starved or frozen in the lean years. They’d risked life and limb to let others do the dangerous work. They’d given shelter and comfort to the newly homeless. They’d evacuated children from the worst of the fighting to take them someplace safe. Marcus’s sister had been WVS. She hadn’t survived to tell her own tales.

“Were you there during the Blitz? No, you wouldn’t have been, would you? You’d have been here.”

“I was in London with my mother. Stubborn old thing wouldn’t come to live with us while Edward was…away, so I packed up Elinor and went to her. I could do my WVS duties there as well as anywhere. The need was no less in London than in Holby.”

“Greater, I’d imagine.”

“I never measured. We don’t. We feed the person in front of us and help as many people as we can. We feed the hungry and shelter to homeless. We treat the injured when we can. We clothe the naked. That’s what we did, for years and years. Every night of the Blitz, we were there.” 10,000 people passed through their respite centers nightly, if the rumors were to be believed. Bernie believed them. “My mother, she came here after the Blitz. There wasn’t a brick left standing of the house where I grew up. Not even she was willing to live in ruins for the sake of winning a pointless argument.” Serena produced a handkerchief to pat her eyes. “She died three weeks shy of D-Day, if you can believe that. She never got to see the other side of this damnable war.” Serena drank her tea for longer than reasonable. Bernie gave her the dignity of pretending not to be hiding.

“My father didn’t either.”

“A soldier?”

“We’re a military family. He was right in the thick of it all along.” This war hadn’t wanted for soldiers, generals, or martyrs. Brigadier General Alistair Wolfe had been all three.

Serena took her hand into her lap. Bernie let her keep it. Serena wasn’t the only one in need of a touchstone.

“Our children will grow up knowing another life. That’s something to look forward to.”

“They might even see an end to rationing someday.”

“Don’t I know from rationing. Nothing’s enough. We’re all hungry, shambling visions of our former selves, trying to rebuild a world several million people shy of where we started.” It was Bernie’s turn to drink and hide. “I can’t conceive of it. We lived through it.”

“I wonder if we did. Did we? It seems like another life, some horrific nightmare lived by somebody else.”

“We lived through it. That’s all it is, a fact, not a defining characteristic.”

“What else could it be besides defining? How many air raids did you walk away from? How many WVS members died? How many were wounded? How many people did you treat only for them to die right under your hands or get blown up the next night?” Bernie ached to move, to pace. Her hands began to shake. Her breath came quick. Darkness danced at the edge of her vision. Serena wouldn’t let go her of hand.

“I stopped counting. I had to.”

“I can’t.” Pressure built in Bernie’s chest, behind her eyes and she pressed them shut. “Why can’t I stop?” Reliving every moment like a film. Seeing it all again at the first smell of shoe polish, at a hint of blood in the air when Charlotte’s scraped her knee. It lurked around each corner and Bernie had no choice but to go.

Serena took a shaking Bernie into her arms. Bernie didn’t need to be soothed, she swore she didn’t. But Serena held her and murmured nonsense and said they’d done all they could, hadn’t they? As if she wasn’t sure herself, as if she wondered. Had they done all they could? What more could they have done? The questions were unceasing. Bernie shouldn’t have come home, there were still more people to save. People were still dying. Some would never return to their families, so why had Bernie? Why had she lived? Why did she deserve it?

“Because you put good into the world, and you kept good in the world.”

“You don’t know that. You don’t know what they could do tomorrow.”

Serena rubbed a smear of eyeliner from Bernie’s cheek. “Your good is not attached to what they do tomorrow. You have done enough to get by. You put good into the world and if it were fair, you’d get good back. But life isn’t fair, and sometimes bad things happen to good people.”

“You assume I’m a good person. You don’t know me very well.”

“I wouldn’t say that. I know I like you and I know you’ve been good to me. You lived for a reason, Bernie, as soppy as that sounds. You lived for a reason, so live like it matters. As if you matter.”

“What should I do?” Serena didn’t know Bernie’s past, or what she’d done to shake Marcus’s faith in her devotion to their family. She didn’t know the hoops she had jumped through to get out with her honorable discharge intact. Serena didn’t understand the tightrope Bernie walked to keep home together. “I don’t know what do to.”

“I told you, Bernie. You lived, so live, whatever that means to you.”

“You might not like me if I did.”

Serena thumbed a smudge of dark makeup from under Bernie’s other eye. “I doubt that. I adore you too much already.”

Marcus’s return punctured their fragile peace in the slam of the French doors leading into the lounge.

“A word, Bernie.”

“In a minute, Marcus. I’m entertaining a guest.”

“Now, Berenice.”

Murmuring apologies, Bernie disentangled herself from Serena. She was caught out, she was flushed. Serena’s perfume mingled with her as their lipsticks had mingled on that cigarette days ago. Bernie had crossed a line Serena had welcomed her to cross. Loving Alex hadn’t felt as perilous as this.

Bernie swept her fingers under her eyes to remove the evidence of what had happened and only worsened the damage. Serena appeared with her handkerchief and fixed her right up. She didn’t say a word; her sympathy was all honeyed feather touch and tender hands cupping Bernie’s chin. Marcus was unhappy, why was immaterial. How could she know better?

Bernie marched to Marcus’s study to find him scowling out the bay window onto the street, smeared an insalubrious grey from the muck of trodden snow.

“What’s got into you? What could possibly have possessed you to behave that way in front of my friend? She’s my guest, Marcus. As I recall, that used to mean something to you.” Yes, Serena was an attractive woman, as anyone could see, but she was no more a rival for Bernie’s affections than the postman.

Marcus rounded on her. “‘Friend’? You’ve never once mentioned her. I know everything about you, Bern. You don’t have ‘friends.’” Bernie retreated a step. “Were it not for all that sordidness during the War, I’d think you didn’t fancy women at all.” Bernie shushed him. She didn’t want Serena to her, to know about her. It wasn’t shame, exactly, but…she had only just found her. She didn’t want to lose her now. “We can’t be associating with her sort, anyhow, especially now.”

“Her sort? What sort is that, Marcus? Upstanding, intelligent women unafraid to use their natural gifts? I think those are exactly the ‘sort’ we should be associating with, if you ask me.”

Marcus rolled his eyes. “You know exactly the sort I’m referring to. A regular Wallis Simpson.” Bernie didn’t follow the Royal Family more than strictly necessary but there was little else to discuss between skirmishes and news of the world. “She’s getting divorced.” Bernie was nonplussed. In her circles, Simpson was better known for her suspect loyalties than her marital history. “You do know who that was, don’t you? Not just another of your lady doctor compatriots. That’s Edward Campbell’s wife.”

“I don’t care whose wife she is. She is my friend, and, yes, I have them.”

“That won’t do at all.” He retrieved a clandestine box of cigars where they were concealed on a high shelf and took one out to trim. “I forbid it. I forbid you to speak to her, and for heaven’s sake, don’t be seen with her.”

“Beg your pardon. I don’t take orders from you.”

“So long as you’re part of this family, you do.”

Bernie sucked in a deep breath.

“Don’t threaten me. I’ve faced down much bigger men than you and come out breathing.”

He yanked the lit Cuban cigar from his mouth. “Oh ho, I should have known—I should have known you weren’t through with it all.”

Bernie was thrown by the tangent. “What are you on about?”

“She’s one of your women.”

Bernie blanched, instantly hating the flutter of fear and roiling nausea that sprung up inside her. “Stop this. I don’t have ‘women.’ She’s my friend. I told you, that’s over.” It had been over from the first kiss Bernie shared with fellow medic Lieutenant Alexandra Dawson on D-Day. They had both known this wasn’t a love that could follow them home. Each moment had been all the more bittersweet for being forbidden. Were it not for the postcards Alex had sent her from Paris, Marcus might never have known. _I wish he didn’t._

“It had better be done with. The only reason I’ve put up with that unnaturalness is because the children love you.”

Bernie growled, “You know bloody well I love my children. I won’t have you implying otherwise.”

“Then act like it. Act like you’ve got an ounce of sense in that dizzy head of yours and prioritize. You can’t be taking on every charity project and lone wolf on the range. Your children need you, I need you. Act like you have some idea what it takes to be a wife and mother. Maybe then you’ll finally convince the rest of us.”

Bernie’s palms began to sweat. There was no dizzy, tingling feeling to accompany it like when Serena leaned toward her or brushed her cheek.

“You don’t choose my friends, I choose my friends.”

“She had better only be a friend.” He puffed away at his cigar. “You know as well as I do, you only got out of the army with your rank because of who your father is. One sniff of unnaturalness—”

Bernie threw up her hands in self-defense. “You’ve made your point." It had been too good to be true, seeing Serena again. Her red lips. Her sparking wit. Her safe arms. “I won’t speak to her again, all right?”

“Good. I want her out of this house, _now._ ”

Bernie called upon her not inconsiderable nerve to reenter the lounge where she’d left Serena. When she did, it was as if a switch had been flicked. The warmth Serena had demonstrated only minutes prior had been replaced by a terrible blankness. Bernie couldn’t find it in herself to be as cruel as Marcus expected. She never left a woman behind.

Serena crossed her arms in front of her. Her neck was pink, as were her ears. It was embarrassment tinged with shame. Bernie knew something of the look that put on a woman.

“He told you about the divorce. I should have said something.” She laughed at her own expense, plucking at the pendant Bernie hadn’t seen hidden beneath her blouse. Serena waved a hand. “I got sick of being avoided like I carry polio by every person I know and when you didn’t balk hearing my name, I assumed you knew but didn’t care.”

“I don’t care, Serena.” That much was true, though it wouldn’t change what she knew to be necessary. Her children had to come first, or everything was lost. Serena was lost, regardless, so why couldn’t Bernie stop wanting her to stay?

“Your husband cares. You should listen to him. Divorce is worse than VD, or is it the same thing? I couldn’t say. I’m only a trained surgeon.”

“He’s wrong about this.” She didn’t want to part from Serena on these terms.

“Men stick together to protect their territory and their good names. Nothing I didn’t know. Just you be careful he doesn’t scuttle you too, hmm?” Serena dropped her hands at her sides, spine rigid in a pained facsimile of attention. “If you’ll fetch my two, I’ll be right out of your hair. You won’t have to worry about me again.”

“I don’t want you to go.”

“That doesn’t mean I should stay. We both know that isn’t how this works. Elinor and Jason, please, if you wouldn’t mind. I’ll get my coat.” She edged toward the doors, giving Bernie ample opportunity to be brave and fearless and care as much as Serena had cared about the good person Bernie was supposed to be. But Bernie was scared. There was everything to play for, and really, only a stranger to gain. So dear a stranger.

“If you insist.”

No sooner had the quiet roar of Serena’s Sixteen faded into the distance than Bernie was digging out another cigarette to burn the taste of bile from her tongue and tears from her throat. She had let her new friend go without an ounce of the fight she’d have exerted to save a life. So much for all the good she put into the world.

She skipped lunch and kipped through dinner. She couldn’t think of anything worth having anymore, not today.


	2. Chapter 2

Bernie’s easy acquiescence stayed with her for weeks after her aborted lunch with Serena. However her children begged to return to Holby Park and see Elinor and Jason again for another playdate, Bernie firmly declined. At their ages, her children were easily distracted with promises of ice skating on the lake and snow angels in the back garden. Bernie’s conscience was not as easily assuaged.

Serena had known what Bernie would choose before Bernie chose it. How many fair-weather friends had abandoned her at the first sign of social rejection when news of the divorce made the rounds? Without Bernie or her husband, who did Serena have now?

When preparations for the coming winter holidays began in earnest and the children’s relentless pleading began to grind terribly at Bernie’s tender nerves, they returned to Holby City Park. In the vein of Bernie’s typical despicable luck, Serena was there.

She sat in the center of their bench in a black sable coat and veiled velvet hat. Bernie set her children loose on the grounds but remained far from Serena. Save for a minute rouching of her shoulders, there was no indication she recognized the tow-headed twosome as they made for the slide and swings to join the other children weathering the fallen snow and Holby frost for a bit more time in the daylight.

Elinor and Cameron soon recognized each other and took it upon themselves to devise a game all could play together. Jason came from his self-imposed isolation—not a military fort this time but an igloo—to join them. They were as happy as clams. Bernie swallowed her regret. They were happy, for what it was worth. She wanted her children happy.

Bernie and Serena avoided each other's eyes on the intermittent occasions when their lines of sight would cross. Bernie couldn’t help but to look at her. Serena had dried Bernie’s tears, and no one had dried Serena’s, that she knew of. _She wouldn’t have cried over me, she’d have been too angry._ Serena had said she carried her grievances like badges of honor to grave. Leaving Serena aggrieved was far from what Bernie had intended to do that day. Looking back, she didn’t trust her own intentions. She had wanted Serena beyond reason. She wanted her now.

Bernie called the children in when the heavy clouds began to heave a thickening smattering of snow upon them all. It would be a blizzard soon, she was sure. They were due for a storm. She was.

Serena stood in her sensible heels and polka dotted day dress, as pretty as an impressionist painting Bernie was forbidden to admire to do the same. She admired her anyway.

When Serena snuck a glance over her shoulder to watch Bernie usher the children to their waiting taxi, Bernie was glancing back.

* * *

That night, Bernie attended a Christmas party for Society of Greater Holby Surgical Consultants with Marcus. Their university chums and the children’s godparents, Verity and Geoffrey Knotts, were hosting. Bernie wasn’t a hobnobber by choice, despite coming from a prominent military family, she preferred leading from the rear from to rubbing elbows with the well-heeled elite. She would rather have been splitting a broccoli and bean stew with Serena than guzzling sparkling champers that must have come out of someone’s very private collection.

Christmas carols played on the record player. The Knotts’ fir tree loomed above them in the foyer, grand as anything, tinkling with tinsel and tea lights. The house was permeated in the smells of plum pudding and pine.

Bernie hummed her noncommittal opinion of the china pattern she was being shown for the second time in as many minutes. She appreciated a fine dinner set most days, she even had one at home, care of overly generous and interfering Marcus’s mother; tonight, however, her focus was drawn inward and, alternately, toward the door. She was waiting for someone. She was waiting for Serena. The woman had an otherworldly propensity to show up when Bernie didn’t realize she needed her.

Feigning confusion, Bernie interrupted Verity’s recitation of the provenance of her porcelain china. She had more important matters to discuss.

“Sorry, Verity, I assumed Serena Campbell would be here. She hasn’t come already, has she?”

“Oh, you haven’t heard?”

“Heard what?”

“She’s divorcing her husband. The rumor is there’s someone else on the horizon.”

“For him or for her?” she asked on autopilot. She snapped her mouth shut before beginning again. “Never mind, it doesn’t matter, and I’m not sure what that has to do with her being invited to tonight’s festivities.” Verity looked at her pityingly, instantly raising Bernie’s hackles. She glared. Verity dropped the pity.

“It would be awkward, don’t you think, her the only one unattached while all the rest of us have our husbands?” She looked adoringly at Geoffrey who was commiserating with Marcus over one thing or another Bernie had tuned out some time earlier in the evening.

“It isn’t like she’s going to try and steal one of them and take him home.” Silence reigned. “Is that what you think? Is that what everyone thinks?” Bernie narrowed her eyes at one of her oldest friends. “Serena isn’t the villain of this piece, and you should know that. What happened to giving women the benefit of the doubt?”

“It isn’t the done thing, Bernie, for any of us, especially after everything that’s happened. We all have unpleasantness in our marriage, that doesn’t justify breaking up a happy home. For what? Isn’t it enough we have the vote? We work. We kept the home fires burning when the world went to hell. What’s the point of that throwing all that away now?”

“The point is living. We lived and now we live.” She wet her lips and finished off the drink she’d been nursing for the better part of the night. She only drank liberally when she felt safe and Bernie had found no safe haven here. “If living means being miserable to avoid a bit of social disapproval, I want no part of it.”

Verity was aghast. “Bernie!”

“Thank you for the invitation. I’m developing a headache, I think it’s time I went home.”

She sought out Marcus. He’d driven and she’d need his keys or his agreement to leave this ‘do. Bernie had had enough socializing for the calendar year.

She found him comparing his glory days as a rugger to Geoffrey’s. None of them were long out of university in the scheme of things. All heading swiftly and surely into their mid-thirties, feeling decades older.

“Excuse me, Geoff, I need to borrow Marcus.” She ushered her husband out of the way. “We need to go. I need to go home.”

“What’s the matter?” Marcus knew when she was bothered or upset. He may not have known every thought to pass through her head, but he knew plenty. They’d loved each other long enough for that, which explained why Bernie had tried so very hard for them to last longer.

“I want to go home, isn’t that enough?”

“No, I’m staying. These are my colleagues, _our_ friends, I need to be seen here for work. That’s something you need to think about yourself.” Bernie worked a couple of days a week according to the staff rotation and filled in where she could otherwise. According to the hospital’s medical director, there was suddenly little room on the permanent staff for a female consultant, even one of her considerable surgical experience. Bernie was seeking other avenues for advancement. She would have to; a surgeon was all Bernie knew how to be, and that was one part of her life she wasn’t willing to sacrifice for someone else’s happiness.

“Verity and Geoffrey disinvited Serena tonight. Did you know about that?” Everyone who was anyone in medical circles were invited to these parties, hence Bernie’s certainty that she would see Serena. Bernie had sought ought Serena’s work in the weeks since they’d parted ways. Serena deserved to be here more than half the consultants in attendance, by Bernie’s reckoning.

“Why wouldn’t they?”

“Why wouldn’t they?” Bernie was incredulous. “Why should they? There’s nothing wrong with her. She fought in the War like the rest of us. She’s a surgeon. She’s been up to her elbows in bleeding bodies blown apart by shrapnel and air raids, just as we have. She doesn’t deserve to be excluded for being sick of her derelict husband.”

“Watch your voice,” Marcus growled, pulled her even farther from the other party guests. They were drawing looks. Soon, they’d be the subject of rumors and gossip instead of Serena’s misfortune. _Better me than her._

“Why should I? Edward Campbell is a liar and a letch. Whispering won’t keep it from being true when everybody knows.” Bernie hadn’t meant to listen to the rumors, but there were so very many of them and they were spoken with the least discretion. She couldn’t help her curious ears.

“That ‘derelict husband’ you seem set on embarrassing is my direct supervisor.”

“You’re having me on. He works at Holby City Hospital.” So did Serena when she was granted leave to work at all.

“I’m not and even if I was, you need to calm down. You’re making a scene.” Bernie was making a scene. She wasn’t watching her tone or her volume. She was sick of being told to be quiet, to be submissive, to be soft. She was sick of taking orders from someone who was meant to be her equal, not her minder.

“And if I am?” she challenged.

“He’s transferring to St. James to escape the bad air surrounding his divorce. He’s a shoo-in for the position of Medical Director.” Marcus had been seeking a promotion to that position for as long as he’d been working at St. James’s. He must have been passed over in favor of Edward.

“Regardless of all that, this is preposterous, Marcus, and you know it. She’s my friend and she doesn’t deserve to cast out like this. For what? Him? Because he’s worth more than she is?” Not to Bernie.

“Yes, he is.” He cast disquieting looks to anybody looking their way until onlookers returned to their pleasant chitchat. “Her career is going no place and you know it.” Nor was Bernie’s. That didn’t bear saying. They both knew it. War was over, expectations had been reset. Bernie would have to build a future worth having in her own image, according to her own desires. She would have to live…whatever that meant to her.

“Just because ‘that’s the way it is,’ that doesn’t make it right. You all came back to a parade and a line of women singing your praises. We got a pat on the head and our walking papers.”

“You can’t still be banging on—”

“I will always be banging on about it,” she snapped. She hated this. She hated how he made her seem petty and small for wanting more when more was all he ever dreamed of. He was applauded for grabbing for the very brass ring Bernie was verboten to acknowledge. “It isn’t fair, it isn’t right, and I’m not happy about it.”

“You should be happy I took you back.”

That again. It always came back to that. Bernie’s indiscretion. Her misguided heart. Her affair. Her mistake. Her ‘unnaturalness,’ as it were. Bernie didn’t think there was anything unnatural about love save for those who made her ashamed of it.

“Happy? I should be happy you slap me down each time I have an independent thought you disapprove of. Each time I look at a woman twice.”

“Be quiet!” His gruff bark was more attention-grabbing than Bernie’s soft-spoken admission.

“I’m not a child. I won’t be spoken to like a child. I've had enough.” She had given up everything to fight and then kept fighting. She was bone tired and she was finished with all this. “You aren’t the only war hero in this family, Marcus. It’s time you remembered that. I’ll make my own way home.”

Bernie left her husband standing in the Knotts’ well-appointed parlor surrounded by all his colleagues and peers, the only people he thought he’d need. He was welcome to them all.

* * *

Bernie was not the woman she had been before the War, but she knew who she was. She was Berenice Griselda Wolfe, the daughter of a war hero and marchioness. She was a mother to two beautiful kids for whom she would do almost anything. She was a soldier and healer. She was a woman who loved women. Tonight, she was a friend, something she hadn’t been terribly good at lately. Serena deserved better than fair-weather chums. Bernie could be better.

Serena answered Bernie’s knock dressed for home in charcoal trousers and a festive knit twinset belied by her bloodshot eyes. She crossed her arms over her chest to repel the chill blowing through the door. Light from the porch gas lamp reflected off the Spanish flowers decking the scarf covering her hair.

“Shouldn’t you be at a party?”

“There’s nothing interesting happening elsewhere tonight.”

Serena peered over Bernie’s bare shoulder to get a look at the street. “How did you get here? Surely, Marcus didn’t bring you.”

“No, I took a taxi.” Bernie hugged herself, wishing she’d resisted Marcus’s suggestion that she wear a silk dress and mink stole in favor of a wool coat. “I wasn’t going to walk. I’m not that fond of you.”

Serena was skeptical. “Pity. I’m that fond of you.”

“Serena.” Bernie gathered her courage. She didn’t want to fail or lose. There was too much to lose. “I don't care what anybody says about you.”

“I care enough for you and me.”

Bernie leant on the door frame, looking down into Serena’s sad eyes. “Say you'll let me in.”

“Why should I?”

“Because I miss you, and I think you miss me.”

“I hardly know you.”

“I hardly know you, but I know I like you, and you’re good to me.”

Serena’s throat worked swiftly. Her mouth quirked, and she growled in irritation. “Has anybody told you you're irresistible?”

“Only you.”

“Come inside?” Serena pulled back the door, permitting Bernie entry into her leafy detached house.

“I was hoping you’d say that. I’m freezing my pearls off out here.”

Serena’s neighborhood wasn’t far from Bernie’s overall, but in some ways, this was another universe. The house itself was larger than Bernie’s and the garden, though dormant given the season, was immense. The house was ornate and spacious without lacking the warmth that seemed to define Serena. It was sprinkled with fairy lights and tinsel. A tree crouched like a giant in the foyer, making itself seen and felt. Marble, clay, and crystal painted ornaments hung heavily from its boughs. Serena had done this, Bernie decided at once. This was Serena’s Yuletide joy on show.

Serena shut and locked the door behind them. “Why are you here now? The party couldn’t have ended already. Verity loves nothing more than to entertain well into the night.”

“When I found out you’d been disinvited, I considered myself disinvited. I don’t consort with people who insult my friends.”

“I’ve never had a friend like you.” There was that word again, ‘friend’, sprung up between them like a stone wall a meter thick, topped in concertina wire.

“You may regret me before you know it,” Bernie joked.

“I won’t.” Serena led her to the working kitchen where an army of pots and pans were bubbling on the hob. The air was thick with all manner of delicious aromas. Bernie’s stomach grumbled. She hadn’t had much of an appetite recently. “Come, come, I have a whole ice box of food I made for the potluck. Now that’s gone to pot, I fear it’ll all go in the bins. Help me eat some of it? I don’t think my neighbors will accept it from me.” She laughed at the absurdity of the assertion as though they weren’t each aware it was true. A divorced woman was persona non grata in their circles, shunned to obscurity as though divorce were some fatal disease that was catching.

“Point me in the right direction. I’ve been told I eat like a growing boy.”

“Where on earth do you put it all?”

Serena produced plates from the cupboards and utensils from the drawers and handed them to Bernie, who laid out a duet of place settings at Serena’s tidy breakfast table.

“I burn through anything I eat. Marcus doesn’t believe me; he complains about how much food I go through whenever we go out.”

“Well.” Serena harrumphed in blatant disapproval. “That won’t be a problem here. Eat whatever you like. If you’re ever hungry, give me a call and I’ll call round with something. We can’t have you wasting away.” She beckoned Bernie to the stove. “Have your pick.”

Bernie whistled her appreciation. It was decidedly wartime fare as Bernie could easily identify some of the creations as coming right out of the Ministry of Food’s leaflet, but they all seemed much more delicious created by Serena’s perfectionist hands. Lord Woolton pie, corned beef fritters, vegetable turnovers, Welsh cakes, sausage stovies, shepherd’s pie, and raspberry jam tarts.

“You did all this?”

“I had to. Edward took the housekeeper with him.” She tutted, feigning lightheartedness. “I don’t think it was the pay increase she was after.”

Bernie tentatively placed a hand on her back.

“With all this, you’d think you have a much bigger family to feed.” How to bridge the gap between where they’d been and whether they were, she didn’t know. She just kept talking and hoped she’d stumble on the right combination of words to get Serena to look at her how she did before.

Serena affected nonchalance. “I used to be a lot more popular around these parts. My mother taught me never to attend a party emptyhanded. Seems I put the cart before the horse this year.” Serena plated up plenty enough food for the two of them and they adjourned to the table to dig in.

“You can bring some of this over to mine anytime. I-I’ve never been one for cooking myself. I can’t say my mother didn’t try to teach me, I just wasn’t interested.”

“I was the same about sewing. I never had the patience for it when a girl. Knitting, however; knitting is more my forte.”

“Good for the manual dexterity.”

Serena smiled wanly and gave her elegant fingers a sensual stretch. Bernie swallowed a boiled potato and held her peace.

“Something’s got to keep me limber when I’m lucky to get into theater a couple of times a week.”

“You too?” She hadn’t wanted Marcus to be right. Neither of them should be on the sidelines in all this. They were too gifted to be forgotten. _But isn’t that history itself, us forever on the margins unless it’s us writing the story?_

“Very much me too.” Serena stabbed her fork into a Welsh cake. “It’s got worse since Edward went on his way. Seems I’m known for being tempestuous and quick-tempered. Three guesses where that rumor started and the first two don’t count.”

“You’re joking.”

“I’m not _that_ funny,” she declared. “No, I’ve been deemed too difficult to work with by the administration, so that leaves me out entirely.” Bernie deflated. There had to be something she could do. “No need to fret on my behalf. I’ve caught up on my knitting, means it hasn’t been a complete loss.”

“They shouldn’t be able to do that to you.” Bernie only sometimes got stuck in to her satisfaction, but nobody has thus far attempted to call her too demanding. They knew a competent surgeon when they saw one, regardless of their willingness to say as much.

“No, they shouldn’t, but who’ll tell them they can’t? It isn’t as though they’ll listen to me.”

“I could have a word with someone.”

“I can’t ask you to put yourself out.”

“You haven’t asked, I’ve offered. Women have got to stick together in this world. Who’ll fight for us if we won’t fight for each other?”

“My thoughts precisely.” Serena’s eyes crinkled as she smiled. “Now eat up, for heaven’s sake. There’s more in the oven.” She hopped up to get them beverages. “Wine?”

“I prefer whiskey, but I’ll never turn down a respectable vintage.”

“Then, my dear, you’ve come to the right place.”

Between hearty gulps, Bernie tucked into Serena's remarkably shepherd's pie. “Are you in the market for a new spouse, by any chance? You'll have them lining up for a plate of this.”

“I might be out of the marriage game forever after this is settled. I don't know that I'm meant to share my life with someone. I can't seem to get it right.”

“That doesn't mean you ought to give up. There's bound to be someone out there who's good for you.”

“I keep thinking that. Sometimes I even think I've met them. In the end it's only wishful thinking. You can't build a life on that, can you?”

“I’m thinking of leaving Marcus,” Bernie blurted out.

Serena blinked. “What?”

“I…don’t want this. I don’t want to be ordered about like an underling. I…”

Serena blotted her lips, leaving lipstick marks on her napkin. “I sensed you were unhappy but leaving him? That’s an entirely different story. What’s brought this on?”

"Misery. Loneliness. Heartache. Take your pick." She raised her shoulders in a childish shrug and stood to clear her plate. She and Serena proceeded to start the process of washing up. Bernie’s usually immense appetite had abandoned them. “I don’t remember him being so cruel when we married. It wasn’t a proper love match, but I did love him once. I don’t feel like I recognize him anymore.” Herself, she recognized more readily. “And I’m not anything like I used to be.”

“Who you are is glorious, and I’ve no reason to lie, so believe me.” Serena took her drying flannel from her. “You’re fantastic, Berenice Wolfe, and fearless, in and out of theater.”

“I’m not.” She was afraid every day of her life. She was only surprised when others couldn’t see it.

“You will be,” Serena assured her. “I should only be so privileged to operate with you one day, and watch you save a life.”

Bernie’s throat smarted at the reminder of what all they had in common. Her heart was trying to crawl out of its cavity to reveal what Bernie wasn’t brave enough to confess.

“I shouldn't have ignored you that day at the park, or anywhere else. What people say about you is none of my concern. You're what I care about.”

Serena returned to the washing. Bernie didn’t trust it when she couldn’t see her face. “Don't go on, Bernie. You'll make me blush. We’ll both be sick if that happens.”

“During our first conversation, you talked about seeing Christmas display at Selfridges as a little girl. You always take Elinor to see it because it’s tradition. It's due to go up any day now. Did you want to see it this year, with me?”

“I don’t know that that’s a good idea. No, not this year. I'll see it another year. It’s a long trip.”

"It might not feel so long if we go together. We could take the train with the children the week before Christmas, make a day of it. They'll get to visit London and we'll make up for lost time.”

“There’s nothing to make up for.”

“I’m not Edward, Serena. You don’t have to pretend I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“It's too much.” _Not if it’s you._

“It's Christmas. Think of it as a shopping excursion. We can shop for, for Marcus, and the children, whoever else you want.”

“I'm not looking to make matters difficult for you, with your friends.”

“You’re my friend, Serena. If things are hard, it isn't your fault. Marriage is hard."

“Don't I know it.”

“You'd be doing me a favor, getting me out the house. Marcus is fit to be tied lately.”

“You drive a hard bargain, Captain. You have yourself a deal.”

They shook on it. Bernie forced herself to break the contact. Serena’s hand fit too securely with her own. Nothing about that was fair.

“It's a date, then.”

"Don't get my hopes up. I haven't had a proper date since before the War broke out."

They laughed. They laughed some more over wine and raspberry jam tarts. Serena was jam-smeared beauty on the opposite side of the breakfast table, giggling up a storm in a wineglass with a Shiraz-stained smile. Brighter than any Christmas angel shining atop a tree. Bernie loved her far too much. She was positive it would undo her, yet here she was to be undone.

Serena drew a ringing circle round the rim of her wineglass in the lull that fell once they’d nibbled to their stomachs’ delights.

“Bernie, promise me something.”

“Almost anything.”

“Don’t leave me again?” Serena averted her eyes from Bernie’s to scrape at the grain of the table. “When you wouldn’t speak to me, I felt like I hadn’t a friend in the world. I know what that is, I don’t want to go back there.”

“It’s a horrible, lonely feeling. I know it. I won’t leave, Serena. You’ll have me forever, from now on.”

Bernie’s word was her bond. From that day forward, they were inseparable.

* * *

Together, they attended weekly meetings at the Holby Women’s Institute just to see the prudes in charge bluster impotently at Serena accompanying Bernie as her plus-one. Between complimentary tea and biscuits, they steadfastly ignored the organizers’ passive aggressive suggestions to depart the premises for more hospitable environs. Serena offered to knit blankets on behalf of the WVS. Bernie offered to bake scones, a holdover from her childhood penchant for sweets. Their offers were accepted with ill grace. They toasted their victory over cottage pie and wine.

Once their children were off from school and their work hours had been further curtailed, they took to driving in the country to enjoy the beauty of the glistening snow covering the formerly green hills. Charlotte helped Jason build his forts whilst Elinor bossed Cameron into building a snow army to fight for her honor. The ladies exchanged sensible skirts for trousers and sensible heels for snow boots. When Serena tripped over a gnarled tree branch embedded in the snow, it was Bernie who hauled her up, smacking the wet slush from her backside and checking for injuries. She was all intact. Nevertheless, she held on to Bernie’s arm, for the remainder of the trip, primly declaring she needed a big, macho, army medic to defend her from the elements. Ever the gentlewoman, Bernie was happy to oblige.

Bernie and Serena bundled the children up in blankets once they’d become caked in snow and ferried them home to Bernie’s warm house for an afternoon thaw and mugs of drinking chocolate sprinkled with cinnamon and nutmeg.

They got into the habit of completing their weekly shopping at the same time. They often argued over who would buy what to be shared so that their ration coupons might stretch twice as far.

When Verity refused to acknowledge Bernie once she espied her browsing the cereal aisle with Serena, Bernie considered their friendship void and didn’t pursue the matter further. They each knew where they stood.

Marcus had had no complaints over the treasure trove of homemade meals Bernie would plate up for dinner when he returned home to work in the evenings. Never mind that Bernie herself was busy with errands or even her own rounds during the day, she was playing the role he wanted her to play. Bernie wasn’t prepared to argue or to call things off right away, she wasn’t that filled with courage just yet, so she simply enjoyed the cessation of hostilities and passed on Marcus’s compliments when she and Serena met up again.

On one of the rare days Serena was called into theater, this time to handle a spate of vascular complications suffered by returning soldiers, Bernie turned to her former WTS comrades for a distraction. She hadn't spoken to them in months and it was good to touch base from time to time.

Like Verity most had done their best to reacclimate to civilian life. They had put what they had seen behind them to pick up where they’d left off with their families. Some had lost husbands, others children. Some had left parts of themselves on the front lines, literal and figurative. There was plenty to rebuild.

Bernie appeared at Keeley Carson’s home bearing long-necks and a covered plate of Serena’s glory buns. The door was answered by one the woman herself.

“Speak of the devil…”

“Sorry?”

“It’s been months since you showed your face at the weekly card games.”

“Marcus doesn’t like it that I gamble, so I’ve cut back.” Marcus still had his weekly gathering at the club, to say nothing of his after-work get-togethers with the boys. Bernie didn’t throw up a fuss. She wanted to keep the peace in her home for as long as she could knowing she’d be the one to shatter it once and for all.

“Still taking orders? That doesn’t sound like the Bernie I remember from Normandy.”

“Holby isn’t Normandy, I haven’t got a bayonet to fight my battles. I’m trying diplomacy on for size.” She followed Keeley inside and greeted the others with hugs and updates on the kids. Of Marcus she spoke little. Her head was full of someone else, as was her heart. They were dealing her into the next hand of poker when she could hold back no longer. “I’ve been getting to know a fellow medic, a surgeon named Serena Campbell.”

“I know that name,” said another medic, one Dominic Copeland.

“She’s married to—”

“Edward Campbell, the head anesthesiologist at Holby City Hospital.”

“I believe so.”

Keeley and Dom shared a worried look. “There’s a sordid mess in the making. Is that wise, the two of you getting so chummy?”

“Was it wise signing up to join the army in the biggest war the world’s ever seen?” Her friend went mum at Bernie’s chiding tone. “She’s—I don’t know, she’s kind and doesn’t ask the wrong questions. I haven’t felt like myself in ages and I feel like she sees me. Isn’t that worth something?”

“Marcus won’t like it,” another remarked. Essie. She’d lost her ex-husband Sasha out there. That was her cross to bear. Marcus’s disapproval of Bernie’s lifestyle and many of her personal choices was well-known. Where he’d been drafted, Bernie had gone voluntarily. Marcus hadn’t forgiven her for leaving their children to his mother’s care, then, and when a skirmish led to his injury and an early medical discharge, he’d only grown more resentful of her service. Bernie battened down the hatches on her swelling discomfiture. This was her life, she was entitled to defend it.

“Marcus has already explained his feelings, at length. He doesn’t know her like I do. She isn’t the kind of trouble he thinks she is.” She wasn’t ‘unnatural’ the way Marcus saw her. There was nothing unnatural about Serena. She was effortlessly good in all the ways Bernie had to try to be. Anything but perfect, temperamental, teasing, and grudge-holding. Prone to excess drink. Given to lie by omission. A flirt to the utmost, fit to tempt a saint. Bernie was anything but saintly.

“It could be seen as taking sides, you against Edward. Might cause strife on the home front,” Keeley opined, the opposite of helpful as the dealer was prompting them to raise or call.

“It’s nothing I’m going to concern myself with.” Not in mixed company, nor aloud. She was taking a stand. It was friendship with Serena over almost anything. “I’m sorry I’ve gone AWOL, you lot. It’s, I don’t know, nice having someone who isn’t always wanting me to be somebody else.”

“Be careful,” Keeley advised, all seriousness as Bernie trounced her with a royal flush.

“I’m always careful.”

They were famous last words.


	3. Chapter 3

Bernie wasn’t careful enough.

Marcus learned of Bernie's renewed friendship with Serena the morning they were meant to leave for London.

Unlike their other arguments before this one, it was quick. Like all the rest, it was cold, and this time, Bernie didn’t yield.

“I was clear.”

“I heard you, and I told you I don’t take orders from you.”

“You’d risk our family on a flight of fancy? I thought I knew you better than that.”

“Men risk it all for much less. She’s my friend.” She believed herself less the more she was forced to repeat the lacking defense. Serena was her friend, yes, but the possibility existed that she could be so much more.

“You know better.”

“I know what I want, and I choose us. I choose this friendship. I choose not to be alone or be the image of the perfect woman you’re looking for. I’m sorry you’re disappointed.”

“I'm warning you.”

“Save your warnings, Marcus. Or at least stop pretending they have anything to do with what’s best for me and not your reputation. I’m not a trophy for you to show off and set on a shelf when I’m no use to you.”

Marcus watched her gather her handbag and gloves in mute disbelief.

“You should know, Serena and I are going to do some last-minute shopping at Selfridges. Serena hasn’t stopped talking about the Christmas display for a week and the children are eager to meet St. Nicholas. I’m picking up your gift.”

“You used to be so different. Where's the shy, retiring girl I fell in love with?”

“She grew up. That's what girls do, grow into women unwilling to settle for scraps.”

“I gave you a home!”

Bernie snapped, “You gave me a jail! You gave me hell. I loved you and all you've done is try to mold me into some model wife I'm not. Look at me, Marcus. Love _me_ , not your memory of me."

“At least I recognize the memory of you.” That was the only person Bernie had known how to be until she’d learned differently. Funny how everything in the world (even the world) was allowed to change yet women were expected to remain forever young and innocent. Gullible. Pliable. Naïve.

“I'll be gone all day.”

Marcus poured himself a morning tipple. It hadn’t gone ten yet. “Good. I won't be home for dinner.”

“Neither will we.”

* * *

Bernie and Serena traveled midmorning by train to London to do the last of their Christmas shopping.

Serena hooked her arm through Bernie’s, and they strolled through the icy streets as a pair with the children cavorting around them. The chilly streets were full of cheer and lights, last-minute shoppers hurrying to and fro, and errant children fogging up toy shop windows with their excitable nattering. Carolers roved in packs, harmonizing like earthbound choirs of angels on every corner.

There were more benefits to this trip to town than merely getting away from Marcus. London was another country, almost another world. Nobody knew Bernie in London. She could adore her friend all she liked here, provided she was careful. She poured her all into their impromptu holiday, intent on make Serena as happy as she was able and being as happy as she could be.

On seeing a woman wrangling three oversized St. Bernards on leads and two kids in short trousers run amok, Elinor asked plaintively if she might have a dog for Christmas. Then Cameron asked for one. Jason pronounce he would prefer a marmalade cat. Ellie and Lottie began chanting ‘doggy, doggy, doggy’ till their mothers offered mulled cider and Christmas biscuits in a bid for quiet.

They repaired to a small coffeeshop to keep their promises and rest their already aching feet. Selfridges had been a mere stopover to pick-up the lambskin aviator jacket Bernie had ordered for Marcus before everything went awry. She would give it to him when she told him, she decided. Whatever else her life might become, she wouldn’t spend any longer as his wife. Neither were happy this way. All Bernie wanted for nowadays was happiness.

“Do you know what you’ll do for Christmas?” It would be Serena’s first Christmas as a divorced woman. Bernie was tempted to invite Serena and the children back to hers for the Yuletide, seeing as this would be her last Christmas as a married woman. It seemed fitting they should be together for it.

“I’ve a large house all decked out for the holidays and plenty of rations left to me since Edward’s made himself scarce. I’ll make it an event for the children to remember, regardless of whoever attends.”

“Surely, not everyone has deserted you.”

“Not everyone, no, but enough. You’re welcome to join us for dinner or on Boxing Day. I’ll feed you up right.”

“You don’t have to feed me to get me to visit.”

“I love—well, feeding you isn’t any trouble. It means I get to see you.”

“I like seeing you as well.”

“We should travel together sometime. A proper holiday. Have you been to Italy?”

“I haven’t.”

“I’ll take you. My friend Sian swears by it.”

“We want to go too,” piped up Charlotte. She was becoming ever more opinionated these days. Privately, Bernie thought it was down to the time spent in the Campbells’ company. A girl couldn’t see Serena as often as Charlotte had without absorbing a bit of her audacity by osmosis.

“Of course, you’ll come too. We couldn’t go without our daring assistants, could we, Bernie?”

“Not at all. It wouldn’t be the same without any of you lot underfoot.”

The children fell into jumbled conversation about what one might get up to in Italy as none of the had been there. Their suppositions were of the fantastical variety: climb Mt. Vesuvius, visit Pompeii. Eat all the food in a single day. Swim in the ocean and vanquish the Kraken. See Zeus and unleash the Titans of olde, contributed Cameron. He had been reading Jason’s books on Greek and Roman Mythology, and was becoming confusingly well-read on the subject, though he hadn’t quite mastered the meaning of ‘myth and legend’ yet. Nor learned to distinguish Greek gods from their Roman counterparts.

The instep of a foot glanced off Bernie’s calve, startling her from the sweet exchange. Serena was sipping her piping hot tea serenely, a hint of a smile dancing on her lips whilst she listened to the children. It was Serena, it must have been Serena. Nobody else was near enough to touch Bernie in that way. Discreetly, Bernie reached underneath the table to catch the stockinged foot nudging her shin.

Serena stilled under her hand. Serena trembled and her fingers flew to her pendant. She began to avoid Bernie’s eyes, focusing instead of Jason devouring his hot cross bun in raptures.

Bernie cautiously skimmed her callused fingers over the ball of Serena’s ankle. Serena fanned the Peter Pan collar of her blouse. Her eyes had grown dark and wide, and flashed like copper pieces in something like anticipation.

“Are you all right, Auntie Serena?” asked Jason, concerned.

“I’m all right, darling, just a touch overheated.”

“It’s cold out.”

“So it is. Now finish your hot cross bun or you’ll have to leave off dessert at dinner.”

Bernie’s daring caress continued until Jason asked for another scone and Serena warned that he might to spoil his lunch. When Charlotte announced her need for the little girls’ room, Elinor perked up asking for the same. Serena’s food slipped from Bernie’s hand under the table. Before Bernie knew it, her friend was ushering the girls off to the ladies to take care of personal matters, leaving her to entertain Jason and Cameron. Not a difficult task. There was plenty more hot chocolate, buns, and biscuits to go around.

They were all packed to go by the time Serena had brought the girls to the table. Bernie was going to put that moment behind her. Serena had been kidding around, surely, and Bernie had misunderstood. That was all. She needed that to be the extent of it.

Once they were out in the brisk, cold air, the tension between them eased. Serena resumed her place at Bernie’s side corralling their combined brood down the pavement. Selfridges was done, now they were on to Harrods. Serena had asked and Bernie had subsided, giving in to her simple request, all in the name of her best friend’s happiness. Never mind that any time spent with Serena increase her contentment as well.

Serena tentatively took Bernie’s arm, as though certain Bernie would recoil from her. When that rejection failed to materialize, they resumed their previous position, prancing arm in arm through London.

“About…inside. I’m sorry, my foot slipped.” Her hand fluttered to her necklace, unwittingly revealing the lie for what it was.

“It didn’t bother me, Serena. You don’t have to apologize.”

“You’re sure?"

“Very.”

They continued on to Harrods where they left the children in the care of a pair of harried shop assistants while they went to explore the Women’s Apparel section of the department store. It wasn’t long before they were in the fitting area, Serena trying on some of everything whilst Bernie demurred on account of sore feet. Her feet were sore, yes, but it wasn’t anything debilitating. Clothing shopping was no more her métier than cooking. In any case, when Serena was putting on theatrics, Bernie preferred to be watching.

“My mother always said I should dress to accentuate my ‘feminine wiles.’” Serena turned to display a flowered calot hat pinned to the victory rolls in her hair. “What about this one?”

“Pretty but I wouldn’t like it for me.”

“Nor do I.” Serena began pulling out the hatpins. “My mother would adore it.” She returned the hat to a shelf to be retrieved by a shop assistant. She surveyed the rack of clothes awaiting her. “Time for something else, I think.” She carried a garment off to the fitting room.

Serena reappeared in a hunter green cocktail dress with a slender patent leather belt to emphasize the natural dip of her waist. The flare of the skirt ended just below her knees, drawing a road map to stocking-less calves and well-turned ankles. The dress's sweetheart neckline showcased the creamy column of her throat and the divot between her collarbones. Her pendant spangled there, star-like, and she shone.

Serena spun in front of the mirror, scrutinizing her reflection from every angle with a critical eye. “I don’t know.”

“You’ll make Edward sorry he thought to look elsewhere.”

Serena’s eyes flitted from Bernie’s to anyplace else. She picked an errant hair from the dress. Finally, she confided, “It isn’t Edward’s attention I’m after.”

“Oh?” Bernie sat on her hands to keep from crossing her arms in front of her. Only an idiot would think Serena would be on her own for long. Edward could feast on his regrets. “Someone new stepped onto the field?”

Serena smoothed her hands over her figure, lips stretched in a frown. “No one I stand a chance with.”

“Have you asked?”

“Haven’t had to. When someone wants you, you know. You also know when they don’t.” Bernie was split between the urge to celebrate and the impulse to berate this person into the ground for not knowing better. How could anyone not want Serena when Bernie wanted her more each day?

“You should take your chances. At worst, at least that way, you’ll know where you stand.”

“You think?” Bernie smiled wanly in confirmation. “No, you’re absolutely right. I know you’re right.”

“It’s been known to happen.”

“Every now and then.”

Bernie reached into a small gift bag she’d concealed behind the settee she was sat on to retrieve a delicate crystal bottle of perfume.

“If you’re going to go stealing hearts, you’re going to need new perfume.”

“Bernie…”

She applied a tasteful spritz to each of Serena’s wrists and proceeded to rub them together. The perfume warmed and bloomed on Serena’s skin, pervading their corner of the fitting suite in a cloud of bold fragrance. 

“The perfume attendant ambushed me with that on the way in. It made me think of you.” She lifted Serena’s hands to her nose to breathe in her scent. _Perfect._ “I think you’ll enjoy it.”

Serena gave a tentative sniff, eliciting a fond smile from Bernie that was instantly reflected on Serena’s shining face.

“I love it. I’ll have it.”

“That’s yours. I already purchased it for you.”

“Bernie…” Serena turned over Bernie’s hands in hers and clutched them tightly in hers.

“I always spoil the people I care about.”

“Speaking of spoiling…”

“Were we?” She chose cheekiness as an alternative to heartbreak. Serena wasn’t the first woman she’d loved and let go.

Serena curled two fingers toward Bernie to coax her to a rack bearing clothing Serena had carried into the fitting area. “I shouldn’t be the only one dressing up. Try something on for me?”

“I thought I was here as moral support.”

“And you’ve served well, soldier, but I want to see you in something pretty too. I’ve even chosen a few things I thought you might like.” There, mingled among Serena’s personal selections, were comparably more slender attire. Utility suits and shirtwaist dresses. A-line skirts and silk rayon blouses. Knit tops and trousers. Bernie’s hands alight on them, more from wonder that Serena had thought of her than any desire to try them.

“I always look the same, no matter what I’m wearing.”

“That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t treat yourself to something opulent and beautiful after all you’ve seen. There’s still beauty out there, you know. It’s easy to forget.”

“I can’t forget. I have you—to, to remind me.” Bernie gave herself a swift mental kick. “I’ll just go pick something out.” She snapped up the first black garment she glimpsed and fairly ran to the changing room. She was positive Serena’s eyes were searing through the changing room curtain to watch her hands fumble on zips and concealed buttons. There was little but an onion skin pretense shielding Serena from what Bernie felt for her. The truth was threatening to out itself—and her.

Dressed, Bernie waffled inside the fitting room wringing her hands with uncertainty. Bernie wasn’t anywhere near as flamboyant as Serena, her tastes running more conservative due to her military service and military family upbringing, but she couldn’t deny a need to impress the other woman. She wanted Serena to see her as attractive, even desirable. To view Bernie through the lens that Bernie viewed her.

“I want it understood I'm only doing this for you,” Bernie uttered as she stepped into the center of the fitting area, into Serena’s line of sight.

“I’d be jealous if you did it for anyone else.”

Serena put down her champagne once Bernie stepped fully into view. There were other parties modeling clothing throughout the suite though none paid Bernie’s unease a bit of mind and Serena was solely concerned with inspecting Bernie from head to toe with all the shrewdness of a drill instructor. Bernie permitted the inspection.

Serena trailed the backs of her fingers down Bernie’s sheer sleeves. Bernie swallowed an incriminating noise of desire, or despair, whichever might have suited were Bernie in any state to think. Serena revolved around Bernie, bestowing the sunbursts of her touch every place that pleased her whilst Bernie stood rooted to the spot. The indent of Bernie’s elbow. The lightly padded byway of a shoulder. The unforgiving crest of a hipbone (Bernie startled, Serena apologized; they went on). Just beneath the neck of her collar. On the underside of her chin.

Serena stood behind her, tracing an indelible line of heat from shoulder to shoulder using the blunt curve of a manicured nail. Bernie repressed a tell-tale shiver. The rapid flutter of her heart resounded through body, her skin, her clothes like a reveille. Serena stood still, her hands firmly planted on Bernie’s shoulders and then down to her sides where the dress fit true to size; on some other woman, like a dream.

“Hello, stranger.”

There was a hint of chill in her breath from the complimentary champagne she’d drunk. Bernie thought wildly Serena would taste of champagne were Bernie to kiss her at this very moment. Bernie had wanted badly to kiss her from the first glance Serena had taken at her lips. Could it be that she’d misread Serena’s preoccupation with her cigarettes when it was something else she sought? Bernie had chosen a fine time to learn hope.

“And here I thought I wasn’t unrecognizable in this getup.”

“Not a chance. I’d know you in nothing at all.”

A shop assistant swanned in to offer further refreshments or other assistance in choosing garments. Bernie furiously buried her feelings as something to be considered once they’d all got home for the evening while she passed another sleepless night in bed. Not whilst Serena charmed the lovely young woman with patter about her fine eyes and dimples and Bernie pretended at a no more than friendly interest.

Serena came back round to her front to look at the full picture of Bernie. Her hands remained at her sides. Bernie missed them on her body.

“You don’t like this, do you?”

Bernie pulled at the bodice of the day dress. She thought she looked all right in it considering she had a few keyhole dresses in her closet to begin with. As she saw it, she couldn't err with the tried and true. "To tell you the truth, I prefer trousers." Bernie didn’t mind dresses, per se, but if it was all the same to her she’d prefer to go another way. Doing otherwise was one in a growing list of concessions she’d made to keep a moderately happy home.

Serena stepped back and planted her hands on her hips. "Then wear trousers. I asked you to do a turn for me, not play a role. Wear what you like. I don't care a wit about the clothes."

Thus encouraged, Bernie came out again, not ten minutes on, this time in understated high-waisted black trousers and a stark white button-up blouse. She felt more herself. This was a uniform of a different kind. Once Serena disappeared into the department store showroom and returned with a waistcoat she recommended Bernie add to her ensemble, she even felt understood. Seen.

"There. You look very collegiate. Every bit the gentlewoman."

"You think so?"

"I do." Serena rubbed her shoulders. "Trust me, I'm a doctor."

“I trust you.”

Serena was terribly easy to trust. Twice as easy to love.

Serena plucked a black felt fedora from an adjacent mannequin. “Come here, I want to you to try this. It’ll complete the look.”

“I couldn’t.”

“Please, Bernie. Humor me?”

Hell and Holby would freeze before Bernie could deny Serena’s cajoling tones. She submitted to Serena’s vicarious preening.

She stood behind Bernie in front of the full-length mirror. “There, aren’t you a picture?”

The wide brim of the hat cast Bernie’s eyes and nose in shadow. She supposed it gave a her a sort of mysterious, roguish air about her.

“I like it,” she allowed.

“I love it! Cary Grant, eat your heart out.”

“Serena!”

“Someone had to say it! You’re getting the hat. I’ll have the shop assistant wrap it up for us.”

“I couldn’t.”

“I can. Consider it an early Christmas gift from me to you.”

“You don’t need to get me anything.”

“I always spoil the people I love. Isn’t that what you said? Let me return the favor.” Though not Bernie’s exact words, the sentiment held. Bernie loved her. Serena loved Bernie. The world could go round.

“All right, I’ll gratefully take the hat. Thank you, Serena.”

Serena’s cheeks pinked at Bernie’s sincerity. “Wonderful. Think nothing of it.”

* * *

After terrorizing the Harrods staff, the children charged down the street into the nearest toy shop to terrorize a shopkeeper already inundated with hyperactive children and harried, overburdened parents. Bernie and Serena lingered outside, hesitant to join in the fray.

“Do we have to go in,” Bernie asked.

“I’ve done all the shopping I mean to do for them, I don’t really need to anything from here.”

“You just wanted them out your hair,” Bernie accused.

“And you didn’t?”

“Fair enough.”

They watched through the picture windows as Jason gravitated to the train sets and Elinor to the doctor bags on display. Charlotte had a doll in one hand and a toy hammer in the other. Cameron was openly coveting a set of die-cast miniature cars on a shelf.

Bernie sighed. She hadn’t gotten her children either of the gifts they appeared to be favoring. “I might have to go in.”

“Poor darling. Go on, I’ll hold your bags.”

“You aren’t coming with me?”

“Afraid not. This is a job for the big burly army medic.”

Bernie poked out her tongue. “Coward.”

“I prefer ‘strategic.’”

Bernie came out of the store with her purchases in time to see Serena reunite with a couple of her former WVS comrades. Serena and the two women in grey reefer coats exchanged loving hugs and season’s greetings. Bernie felt strangely bereft seeing Serena with these women who had loved her before she knew her.

No sooner had her feet hit the pavement than Serena was dragging her over to meet them. One was petite and full-figured whilst the other was tall and statuesque. “Bernie, this petite firecracker is Fleur Fanshawe, another one of our number out of London.”

“A fellow medic?”

“Guilty,” Fleur purred. “I specialize in obstetrics now the fighting’s over. Seems everyone is having babies.” The woman beside her coughed delicately, interrupting what must have been a well-worn routine. “And this is my long-suffering companion, Sophia.” They exchanged convivial smiles. Serena had beautiful friends. “Who’s your friend, Serena? I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”

“Be good.”

“Shan’t.” Fleur presented her hand for shaking. Bernie shook it and introduced herself. “Charmed, I’m sure.” She took a chastising tone with Serena. “Serena Campbell, where have you been hiding this vision of loveliness? I know rationing is still in effect but keeping her all to yourself is just greedy.”

“Erm, thank you?” Bernie repressed a stammer. She had a sinking feeling Fleur wasn’t referring to their fast friendship.

Serena patted her hand, consolingly. “Don’t mind her, Bernie. Fleur’s never met a stranger in the wild she couldn’t flirt with shamelessly.”

Fleur shimmied closer to Bernie. “I always say to expect the unexpected, i.e., me.”

“Soph, be a dear and wrangle this one before she runs my—Bernie off.”

Sophia pulled Fleur away from Bernie’s blushing visage by her corset belt.

“You two never let me have any fun.”

“Your idea of fun will see us all arrested,” Sophia admonished under her breath. That the ensuing trial would be worse for the dark-skinned woman went without saying. Fleur sobered.

“My apologies, mon ami.” The exchanged a brief clinching of fingers. “I suppose I was excited to see who stole our Serena’s heart.”

Serena hissed. “Very funny, Fleur. I can’t help it if Bernie has all the charm of duchess and the strength of an Oxford rower.”

“Have I now?”

“Shush, you know you do.”

Bernie’s permitted herself a small smile. She’d known Serena appreciated her physical prowess when it came to rearranging the furniture in her home and carrying the children up to bed, but this was the first time she’d said as much explicitly.

Fleur clapped. “If all’s forgiven, let’s make a date to go to the cinema someday soon. We have to catch up, Serena, and you simply must bring your new paramour.”

“Oh! I’m—Serena and I aren’t—”

Serena cut her off. “I’ll bring her, if I have to carry her on my back.”

“I’d like to see you try, Campbell,” said Bernie, feeling an unaccounted thrill at the idea of Serena getting physical with her.

“Is that a challenge?”

“Name the time and place.”

“I’ll take you up on that, later.” Serena quirked both brows and Bernie’s heart crawled in her throat. She wasn’t sure they were discussing a good-natured wrestling match anymore. “And you, Fleur, provided you’re on your best behavior, I’ll bring her round to yours in the New Year.”

“Can’t wait. Forgive us for running, Sophie and I are due at Nonnatus House. For some reason, all the children of the East End are scrambling to be born at Christmas time.”

The two women departed at a rapid clip and soon disappeared into the heaving mass of pedestrians travelling Oxford Street.

“So that’s Fleur? Just what kind of operation were you running in the WVS?”

“An effective one! Fleur is simply…Fleur. She’s a bit full-on, but harmless.”

“I like her. I can see you fitting in with her. You’ve got troublemaker written all over you.”

“Do I now?”

“You got me to come all the way to London by batting your lashes. I’d say you do.”

“Careful, I might start to think you like it when I bat my eyes.”

“I don’t mind it.” Serena elbowed her, smirking. “Blimey, what an influence you turned out to be.”

"A wonderful influence, as I'm sure you know. Cheers." Serena hooked her arm through Bernie’s, and they continued their stroll down the lane. It seemed, Bernie had been lovingly taken into the fold.

The children’s energy properly began to flag at the conclusion of a full day in London. They’d passed Buckingham Palace and seen the palace guards. They’d visited the Victoria & Albert Museum. They’d been to countless toy stores. They’d ruined their appetites on all manner of chocolates and sweets. They’d bounded over zebra crossings and romped through St. James Park constructing beshambled snow people with branch arms, dried apricot noses, and milky buttons on their clothes.

Bernie carried Elinor when she nodded off. Serena took Cameron when his youthful exuberance deserted him next.

“Could I ask you something?”

“Anything.”

“Your friends, Fleur and Sophia, are they?”

Serena blinked. “Are they what?”

Bernie readjusted the sleeping girl in her arms to ensure she was truly asleep. “Do they favor women?”

“And if they did?”

“I wouldn’t—I wouldn’t _mind_ , of course, only it seemed to me Fleur was implying…” She tilted her head back toward the greyish sky threatening snow or freezing rain.

“She was implying…?”

“That we might be…do you think…” She centered herself. “Are you?”

“Are you?”

“Would—would it matter if I were?”

“Not a jot. I wouldn’t love you any less.” Almost the perfect sentence.

“Were there others, erm, of a similar persuasion in the WVS?”

Serena rubbed Cameron’s back to soothe his snuffling. “Quite a few. Good comrades to have, all of them. Good friends, too.”

It was a matter of some comfort to find out some of Serena’s fellow WVS chums were of the Sapphic persuasion like herself. Serena loved them regardless; she would love Bernie regardless.

Serena lit upon a quaint little bookstore off the high street. “Oh, look. This is my favorite bookstore. I used to come here all the time with Mother. We have to go inside, for just a minute. Say you’ll come with me.” Bernie acquiesced and let Serena lead her inside by a gentle handle on her wrist.

They roused the children and set them up in the designated children’s corner where the books were brightly-colored and the titles were all in block letters. Jason was rubbing his eyes under his spectacles, already gravitating toward the history section. Charlotte sat on a wooden chair turning the pages of a book about an adventurous teddy bear and his toy animal friends residing in the Hundred Acre Wood. Elinor tucked herself up against Cameron’s side whilst he began to read her _The Hobbit_ from page one. 

Serena peeled off to find one of Bronte’s works for her private library and came back with _A Room of One’s Own_ by Virginia Woolf. “For you,” she said to Bernie, handing her the slender tome.

“Why?”

“I don’t know, I suppose everything I read from her makes me think of you.”

Bernie looked quickly around the bookstore and only found several other women intently perusing their own prospective purchases. None were paying them any mind.

“You think me an ardent sapphist?” An arrant feminist, surely, but this was a beast of another color.

“I think you’re like me, a lover of women. Does the depth of it really matter when we have that in common?”

“Serena, you cannot say that.” Bernie’s marriage, her children, her freedom depended on her preference for the fairer sex remaining secret.

“I’m only saying it to you.” Serena seemed less certain. “Are you going to have me tried and imprisoned?”

“You know I won’t.”

Serena nodded, tersely, the color of spoiled milk departing her complexion. “You aren’t the only one, I told you. You’ve nothing to fear from me.”

Bernie traced the book’s leather spine. “I have a copy at home. I keep it in my box of sewing. Marcus wouldn’t think to go pawing through there.” ‘If you can suture a wound, you can stitch a tear,’ he said. Bernie loathed him for how his putdowns made mockery of the skills she had worked all her life to attain.

“Then, we’ll have to try something new.” Serena picked primly through the shelves, leaving behind her a trail of mischief like the scent of freshly baked scones. Bernie tottered, trembling in her wake. “Have you read Radclyffe Hall by any chance?”

Bernie flushed and hurried to shush her. “Serena!”

“I was only curious.” Bernie followed her between two discreet shelves where such literature was kept, available but out of easy reach. Conspicuous by its very presence.

“Are you trying to have me arrested?”

Serena regarded her with frustration. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m _trying_ to get you to smile.”

Bernie, in her haste to get them out of common sight, had sandwiched Serena between the sparsely populated bookshelf and her own body.

“I’m not sure scaring the life out of me is the way to do it.”

She dropped a hand on Serena’s shoulder, ostensibly to put space between them though it didn’t work out that way. She brought Serena nearer. Her pupils were blown wide. Her breasts brushed Bernie as her breath quickened.

“I’ll be more careful.”

Bernie gulped. Her hairline prickled with sweat. Her skin felt tight. Serena licked her lips, and Bernie was struck by how close two people could be without being naked or entwined.

“You can’t say things like that in public.”

Serena fixed her eyes on Bernie’s lips. “All right,” she said, though Bernie was certain as the hour of the day was waning that it was anything but.

They took the train home after an early supper. They had a cabin to themselves.

The children slept piled across their adjoining seats like a litter of puppies tumbled into a wicker basket whilst their mothers watched on.

“What did you mean when you said you're like me?” Bernie asked Serena.

“I told you.”

“Tell me again.”

“Do you remember when I sat beside you in the park and couldn't keep from exclaiming over how beautiful you are?” It was something Serena continued to do. Repetition of h-er admiration didn’t stop Bernie from flustering at it, each time more intensely. What did it _mean_?

“I thought you were being kind.”

“How about the time I held your hand during our stroll through the Christmas Market in Old Holby?” Serena had rustled the snowflakes from Bernie's fringe and grabbed her hand to lead her out from the ensuing flurries. They'd drunk hot toddies and giggled like schoolgirls over anything that came to mind.

“I thought you were being…friendly?”

“Do you remember when I kissed you outside the HWI, under the mistletoe?” Serena had taken care to check nobody was nearby before bestowing a kiss on the high arch of Bernie's cheek. Bernie had cupped her own cheek, giddy as a child, unwilling to analyze why Serena’s kiss made her smile.

“I only thought you were being sweet.”

“I’m all sweetness when it comes to you. I was positive you saw right through me.”

“I didn't see anything.” Only what she'd wanted to see, having deluded herself that anything else was fiction.

“We can call it a misunderstanding, if you prefer, and we'll say no more about it.” Serena turned to stare out into the darkening day. What little sun there had been was behind them now. “I don't want anything but what we already have.”

Bernie was different. Bernie couldn’t think of a moment since they’d met when she’d been content not to move the goalposts, to claim more ground in Serena’s life as Serena had claimed room in Bernie’s heart.

“How did you know...that about me? Was it something I did, or said?”

“You were...you and I just knew. Bernie, how you'd look at me, hold my hand. Touch me. I knew. You didn't have to say anything.”

Bernie had been stepping with care since she returned, around the landmines of her memories and Marcus’s fury. She had been blown back to reality, to this fictive bubble of a life she scarcely wanted and could scarcely live. It was all she had before; now she had Serena.

Bernie pulled the shades down on their cabin windows and drew Serena into her arms.

“Hush, the children are sleeping.”

When Bernie kissed her, Serena kissed her back again and again.


	4. Chapter 4

In Holby, they carried the kids up to bed at Serena house’s and tucked them in snug as bugs under mountains of blankets.

Bernie phoned home to let Mrs. Vesper know they wouldn’t return till morning. If the older woman suspected anything, she wisely kept her own counsel. Bernie didn’t care what she suspected.

Serena locked all the doors and doused the flames in the fireplace. They extinguished the lights on the main level and climbed the stairs to Serena’s bedroom hand in hand.

Bernie followed Serena to her bed, and she didn’t leave for the rest of the night.

* * *

Bernie fell backward into the bedsheets, hours later, sated and sticky with Serena. She blinked, bleary-eyed, at the starlit ceiling. There was just the light from the windows to guide them and a single candle beside the bed.

Serena lazed next to her, observing Bernie's languorous sprawl with the air of a cat who had got and quite enjoyed her cream.

They found each other’s hands in amid the bedcovers and held fast to one another.

“I love you, Serena. I was afraid at first of how I felt about you, that it was too fast to be true. It isn’t. It’s real.”

“I love you very much. I don’t know when I realized. Maybe when I thought you didn’t love me enough to come back. You wouldn’t be the first.”

“I love you more than enough.”

“I know that now.”

Serena stretched and snuggled nearer. Her pendant spilled from the sanctuary between her breast into a puddle of delicate chain on the sheets. Bernie touched it. When Serena didn’t balk, she cradled it in her palm.

“Tell me about it?”

“My father gave it to me when I completed my medical studies. He believed in me.”

“My father believed in me as well. I like to think my mother did too.”

“Seems our fathers had the right of it.” No further discussion was given to Adrienne McKinnie or what she’d believed.

“How are you able to accept it so easily, feeling this way about women?”

“It was difficult initially but over time, I realized of all the reasons I might consider loving a person unacceptable, their being a woman would never qualify. I don't see love as wrong.” She cupped Bernie’s cheek. Bernie kissed her hand and settled her head beside Serena’s on the single pillow.

“I don’t want to be married to him anymore. I don’t want to lie about who I am. I know I have no choice, but I can’t live that life anymore. Don’t ask me to.”

“I’m the last one to ask you to live for anyone bar yourself when I couldn't.” They kissed to settle Bernie’s demons and momentarily quiet her fears. “Whatever you want, Bernie, I want for you.”

“I want you and to be with you.”

“Then you’ll be with me. In case you haven’t noticed there’s room enough here for all of us.”

“You’d have me, here?” There’d be gossip, much of it true, and none of it kind. There would be consequences if Marcus should ever choose spite over pride.

Serena pushed Bernie onto her back and moved to sit astride her thighs. The soft hair between her legs tickled Bernie’s sensitized skin. “Berenice Wolfe, you are all mine. Woe betide any man who tries to separate us."

“Or any woman.”

“Anyone at all.” She kissed Bernie, slow and sweet, and then deeper. All that possessive adoration she’d kept under lock and key came out in this kiss. Bernie swept her hands up and down Serena’s naked back. Serena was hers equally as much. It hadn’t been a man or someone else Serena had primped for in Harrods but Bernie. Serena’s fire burned for _her._

When they rose in the morning to begin their day, Bernie looked a happy fright. Her hair was a right mess. Her lips were a swollen, loved-on red. But her eyes were bright. She smiled, thinking of Serena belting Christmas standards in the shower, blowing her kisses through the veil of steam.

Fresh from the bath, Serena was scrubbed pink, clean. She smelled of jasmine and lemons, a touch of bergamot. Seductive, musky, tart and sweet. It wafted after her out of the en suite. Shalimar, Bernie remembered. The bottle Bernie had given her. That scent would remain with her the rest of her days.

Serena snuck up Bernie to hug her from behind. Contemplations were lovely but living here in the present in Serena’s arms was leagues beyond.

"Mmm, shouldn't we wake the children?"

"It's nearly Christmas, let them sleep in."

Serena treated Bernie to a filling breakfast and a protracted session of kissing on the counter, against the refrigerator, in the storage cupboard. They were reenacting last night’s lovemaking on the parlor sofa when the first shout of maternal duty sounded upstairs.

“Mummy, I’m hungry,” shouted Cameron from the top of the stairs.

This was familiar.

Bernie dropped her head on Serena’s chest where her heart had already begun to slow from their amorous activities. Serena propped herself up on her elbows. Her lips were kissed deep pink and her breasts were bare and mottled with love bites blooming in the shape of roses.

“You get them dressed and I’ll get started on breakfast.”

“Can’t we just ignore him?” Cameron would bang on until he was happy. Bernie couldn’t say which of his parents he inherited his obstinance from.

“At your own peril.” She patted Bernie’s bum and gave it an affectionate pinch. “Go on, or the boy’s going to have quite a tale to tell when he goes back to primary school.”

Bernie rolled off Serena and started to make herself decent. Serena slipped off to the kitchen to wash up and get ready for the children. Bernie was sure she’d got the rotten end of this bargain. Once the children were dressed in their new things and sitting round the table with their mothers like family, Bernie realized there was no rotten end. This was the bargain. This was why she’d come home.

* * *

Marcus was waiting when they returned to the Dunn house with the children. Serena had remained in the car with her two, given there was no longer a housekeeper to keep an eye on them at home. Charlotte and Cameron greeted their father with hugs and kisses. They had many a story to tell of their adventures to London and back. Serena and Bernie had agreed not to ask the children to keep secrets. This was a mess of the adults’ making, no need to drag them any further in the middle of it.

“Where have you been?”

Bernie presented Marcus with his Christmas gift. “I got you this.” It was neatly wrapped, courtesy of the sweet, overworked shop girls at Selfridges.

Marcus tucked the gift under his arm. “That doesn’t answer my question.”

Bernie stood her ground. She had come up with a white lie for this. She had told Mrs. Vesper she wouldn’t be home, she hadn’t said where she and the children would be staying the night.

“We stayed the night in London on account of the snow.”

Marcus puffed his chest. “Don’t lie to me.”

“Tell me what you want to hear, and I’ll tell you that instead.”

“I want the truth.”

“I stayed with Serena. I told you we were going together.”

“You did more than stay with her, didn’t you?” He pointed at his neck and Bernie’s hand flew to her collarbone. Marcus' expression darkened. “There’s nothing there, but you thought there might be. That’s enough.”

Bernie smiled, determined to keep her head up through this, determined not to frighten her children who were old enough to be cognizant of the confrontation occurring right in front of them.

“Things must change, Marcus. We’ve both known that. We’ve danced around it.”

“I haven’t danced. I’ve bled and I’ve kept my silence to keep this family together while you gallivanted around with your—what’s the word for it? Lovers?” That wasn’t the word he was thinking of. Bernie knew plenty of words he might have uttered in its place. She wouldn’t say them, either.

“Mummy, what’s a lover?”

“Someone a grown-up person loves in a special way, Lottie. That’s all it is.” Bernie cut her eyes back to her soon-to-be ex-husband. “There’s been no gallivanting. You’ve known as well as I that we aren’t happy. We weren’t happy before the War and we’re no happier now. We’ve been lying to ourselves and that needs to stop. It isn’t good for the children.”

“Like you give a red damn about the children.”

“They are _all_ I give a damn about!”

“Don’t swear!” Charlotte wailed. “Mummy says never to swear.”

“You’re right, darling. We shouldn’t swear. Sometimes when adults are angry, bad words come out because we don’t know how to show our anger any other way. We won’t use them in front of you anymore, I promise. Your father promises as well.” Bernie didn’t ask. Marcus didn’t have the high ground on understanding their children’s needs.

“If you think I’m going to let you railroad me into some whacked-out arrangement, you’re more addled than the mixed-up squaddies coming back fighting shadows in the alleyways. This isn’t War, Bernie. You aren’t the captain anymore. Here, I win.”

“It isn’t about winning, Marcus. It’s about damage control.” She indicated their children looking between their feuding parents.

“I’ll ruin you. It won’t be hard. You won’t get another job, you won’t touch another scalpel in this life.”

Bernie stood to her full height. She’d been shrinking herself to suit his preferences for months on end and longer. No more.

“That’s where you’re wrong. You won’t tell a soul. Your ego won’t let you. Who’d hire a surgeon who couldn’t keep his wife from straying with another woman. Shall I tell Henrik, or would you like to?”

Marcus blanched, his nostrils flared. “You’ll never advance. You’ll never set foot in a theater worthy of the name.”

“We both know who the better surgeon is, Marcus. Watch where you tread.”

He advanced toward her. “No, you watch!”

Serena appeared at the door to the lounge. “Be very careful, Mr. Dunn, where you point angry fingers.”

“What are you doing here?”

Serena interposed herself between Bernie and Marcus. “Protecting my best friend.” She looked back at Bernie. “I heard shouting. Shall I summon the constabulary?”

“There’s no need for that.” Marcus crossed his thick arms and tapped the toe of his Oxford on the parquet floor. Serena considered this.

“The way you’re looming, I’m not so certain.”

He huffed, indignant. “I’d never strike a woman.”

“How reassuring. Get away from her.”

Marcus took a couple of steps back from both women. “What’ll Edward say when he hears about this?”

“I wouldn’t worry about Edward. The embarrassment would surely drive him to call you a liar, after he’d drunk himself sick. I’ll save you the shame and exile from your band of chums. I left him because he found himself a lovely young nurse willing to fawn over his every word. Then I took him for every dime he had.” Serena smiled. There were tiger sharks less frightening. “Not the story he told you, I presume. I thought not. He saved face, I got everything else. I may not have my reputation any longer, but I have everything that counts. Save. Your. Breath.”

Marcus worked his jaw, looking back and forth between the two women.

When his shoulders slumped, Bernie knew he’d come to the same inevitable conclusion they had.

Their endgame was set.

“This is my mother’s house, I won't let you have it.”

“You can stay with me," Serena interjected. "There’s plenty of room, for you and the little ones.”

“I won’t let you take the children.”

“When do you see them, Mr. Dunn? Between your many, many surgeries and shifts on the ward? Who cares for them when you’re away? The kind and maternal Mrs. Vesper?” Marcus didn’t offer a rebuttal to the slight. “A lovely woman, I’m sure, but she isn’t their mother.”

“She left, you know. Them, me. She’ll leave you. The next war will come along, the next disaster that needs a hero, and she’ll be off. You aren’t special. She only lets you think you are.”

Serena elided this slip of Marcus’s emotional mask. Her sudden reserve was daunting. Marcus was wrong. Serena had to know he was wrong.

“Let her take them for now. Stopping her, going to the courts would mean admitting the truth. Do you want to admit the truth, Mr. Dunn?”

He worked his jaw. “I won’t be blackmailed. This is unacceptable.”

“The children couldn't have a finer mother and they will never be safer than in her care. You know that as well as I do.”

Bernie resumed her place in the conversation. This was her fight and one she should be arguing herself, however she might like to take the rearguard. Bernie was the soldier; fighting was what she was for.

“Marcus, enough. I won’t keep you from them. You can see them whenever you like. We won’t be far.”

“You were gone for years," he countered, his mien frustrated in mounting defeat. There was love there, too. Twisted by resentment and distance, it hadn’t stood a chance.

“All the more reason for me to be with them now. They need both of us. Have your anger, I accept that, but don’t punish the children for it.”

“If I sniff even a hint of unnatural behavior—"

“You won’t.” Now wasn’t the time to delve into Marcus’s persistent prejudice. Bernie simply wanted to keep her children in her arms for as long as she was able. Preferably forever.

“Fine!" He huffed, relenting. "I’ll allow it.”

“Thank you.”

“That's the last concession you can expect. You hear me? As far as I’m concerned, this marriage is over. Don’t come here again.”

Bernie swallowed. Her insiders were in tumult. She signaled for the children to return to her. “I’ll speak to our solicitor.”

“I’ll see to that.”

“Wouldn’t it be less damaging coming from me?”

“For whom, Bernie? The damage is done.” Marcus was tired, Bernie could see that. “Just…go, Bernie. That’s what you wanted to do all along. I won’t stop you.” Marcus made for the drinks trolley and the decanted a neat bourbon into a glass.

She wanted to apologize, but she couldn’t say she was sorry for any of the things that mattered.

“You’ll be nothing without me, you know that?” He had to twist the knife; he couldn't resist.

“I’ll be happy, Marcus. I’ll finally be happy.”

“Let’s go,” Serena instructed, cutting into Bernie’s self-recrimination before they found voice. She herded the children toward the door and away from the vision of Marcus mourning a family that had been real without ever being true. Bernie wondered if Edward had watched after Serena like this when she sent him away, had he crawled into a bottle to mourn the loss of the best thing that had happened to him, or had he thought he got off easy? Marcus hadn’t got off easier than he deserved. Bernie hadn’t.

She drifted after Serena, tearing her eyes from the sliding doors of the sitting room Marcus had shut himself into. It wasn’t her sitting room anymore. This wasn’t her home now.

“We’ll take my car.” Serena beckoned Bernie to follow her into the whirling snow. She reached for Bernie’s gloved hand when her feet seemed to stick on the final front step. This was the only place she’d called her own since a child, how could she leave? “Come along, my love. There’s nothing here for you.”

Cameron took her other hand. “Come on, Mummy. Auntie Serena says it’s time to go.”

Charlotte nodded around her thumb, gone silent and compelling. Her children knew that something had changed. Things had been changing as long as they’d been alive; they didn’t fear it.

Despite regular plowing, snowdrifts crowded the roadways and pavements. The lamp posts shined gritty yellow lights onto slushy pavement. Bernie and Serena loaded hastily packed luggage into the boot of the car, the children already clambering in the backseat, chattering madly about snowmen and presents and whether St. Nicholas would know where to find them now they were moving someplace new.

“Don’t worry,” Cameron assured all the younger children, “St. Nicholas knows just where we’ll be ‘cause Mummy will tell him.”

“I told you they’d be fine,” Serena reassured her.

“Then why am I so afraid?”

Serena took a keen eye to their surroundings. It was unlikely anybody was out in this weather, and if they were, they were likely more concerned with getting into the warm than eyeballing two women standing too close for propriety in the morning light. Serena pressed her chilly lips to Bernie’s. Bernie leaned into her kiss, cupping a strong, delicate elbow in her hand.

They parted with twin exhales pluming out into the chilly air.

Serena watched her with her dark, startling eyes. “You’re afraid because everything is changing, and you don’t know yet where you’ll land. Anyone would be afraid.” Serena kissed her again. Bernie dared to let herself melt into the contact. Serena nudged the tip of Bernie’s nose with her own. “You are the bravest soldier of the many I’ve known. It’s all right if you’re scared, I’m scared too. The difference is I have you.”

Bernie’s lips twitched along with her hands. They ached to peel Serena out of her hat and coat to uncover the deliciously warm skin below. “And I have you.”

“You do, for as long as you want me. Now, let’s get a shift on before the bits of me you like best start freezing off.”

“Heaven forbid. I’d have to stitch it all back on.”

Serena chuckled. “You’d leave me better than new.”

“You have too much faith in me.”

“There’s no such thing.” Serena produced the keys to the car from the deep pocket of her swing coat. “Care to do the honors?”

Bernie took them gamely. “You do know how to show a girl a good time.”

“You have no idea,” Serena rumbled with a caress of Bernie’s ungloved wrist.

Marcus had long been reluctant to let her do the driving, for fear she’d crash his prized vehicle, as though he’d forgotten she’d operated ambulances on worse terrain in Germany and France than the well-paved roads of Holby. _Don’t think of him now. He won’t think of me._ Even as the thought crossed her mind, she knew it to be a lie.

Serena entertained the children whilst Bernie settled into silence as they traversed an increasingly snowbound Holby City. She was grateful Edward had sprung for heating in his car otherwise they’d all have frozen in the chilly night.

Bernie’s reservations returned with a vengeance once they pulled up to the circular drive outside the Campbell residence. The house was still beautiful, if more ostentatious than Bernie would have expected of Serena. Knowing it was Edward’s choice and its ornamentation was Edward’s preference helped somewhat.

“Bernie?” Bernie swallowed her doubt to trade glances with Serena. “It’s cold out. Would you care to come in?”

“Mummy, I’m cold,” complained Elinor behind them, with the jeering assent of the other children. Not even the radiant heat arising from the engine was enough to keep out the worst the coming snowstorm.

“You heard her,” Bernie deflected. Serena’s sympathy filled her with guilt. Here was the woman who had risked her reputation to love Bernie, and Bernie was asking herself if all this was worth the fear.

Serena held her gaze for a long moment until Bernie took her cue cut off the engine. “I’ll get the bags if you round up the children.”

“Shouldn’t I take care of that…considering?” The sudden cooling in Serena’s gaze filled Bernie with immediate remorse.

“Considering?” Serena challenged, daring Bernie to spout the very chauvinist nonsense her colleagues did.

Bernie adjusted the fit of her driving gloves. “I was the soldier after all. I think I have something of an advantage in the strength department.”

“You and I are going to settle that argument about you being big and strong sometime soon.”

“I thought that was what you liked about me.”

Serena softened and she brushed a hand along Bernie’s jaw. “One of many, many things.”

“Mummy!”

“Remind me to list them for you, in detail, once this lot are all tucked in for the night.”

They hastened out of the snow into the house and immediately stoked the hearth to a roaring flame whilst the children got settled.

“Elinor, Jason, show Cameron and Charlotte where the large guest room is.” The girls had bunked together in Elinor's room whilst Cameron shared Jason's the previous evening. “You can store your bags there. We’ll get you all set up after playtime.”

Bernie gave the house a second look now it was daylight. Every detail took on new significance now that Bernie was here to stay. This was her home now.

“I thought you lived here alone because he’d abandoned you.” She hadn’t pried early on; she had too many secrets of her own to prevent Serena demanding reciprocation. Now she wanted to know everything that Serena had lived through, who had hurt her. Who she’d hurt.

“He did, in a manner of speaking. Edward found someone new. He gave me the option of maintaining the fiction of a happy marriage while he kept a second house, and I decided I’d rather be alone. That was how I felt already; why pretend?” The nonchalance of her confession did nothing to hide how affected she was by the divorce. _Why pretend?_

“I didn't know I was pretending in the early days. I thought marriage felt like this for all women. What kind of wife was I that going to war felt the most like being free?”

"The right wife in the wrong marriage. Nothing more."

“I expected it to hurt. Leaving there knowing I’m not permitted in my family home stings.” Bernie looked up to keep erstwhile tears from clouding her vision. “I loved him. I love him, as the friend he used to be. I didn’t want to cause any harm.”

“You did as little harm as you could, and you suffered for it. The War is over, Bernie. Time to lay down your weapons, darling, most especially against yourself.”

Serena held her and kissed her and loved her. In Serena’s eyes, there was nothing wrong with her. There was nothing wrong with Bernie, and Bernie was starting to believe that.

“Now, no more tears today, hmm?” Serena stroked her hair. Bernie hadn’t managed to put it in order this morning; Serena couldn’t keep her hands out of it long enough. “If you're good, I'll make you a Sunday roast. I've saved up plenty of rations now I'm no longer entertaining so frequently. Which isn't to say you won't quickly eat me out of house and home if your two eat like you do."

“We'll make do.” If they couldn’t afford to remain in Holby, so be it. They’d go to London, or they’d go to the country. Bernie would go anywhere if it meant keeping this family she’d built.

“We most certainly will.” Serena left Bernie in the safe keeping of the sofa they’d nearly made love on this morning.

“Where are you going? I thought you were going to challenge me to a duel in defense of your honor.”

“I can think of something I’d much rather do to you.”

“Oh?” Bernie’s heartrate increased just thinking of all they might get up to with the wee ones distracted for the foreseeable.

“Not that, insatiable Wolfe woman.” Serena’s kiss removed the sting. Bernie tried to pull her Serena onto her lap only Serena sidestepped her efforts. She was much nimbler than her heels implied.

“Not till the children are sleeping. This will be almost as good.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

Serena put on the record player and a scratching, hitching melody swayed upon the toasty air. Bernie didn’t know much about music, but she knew a love song when she heard one.

Serena held out her hand. “May I have this dance, Captain Wolfe?”

Bernie let herself be pulled to her feet. “I thought you’d never ask, Ms. Campbell.”

They drifted together, puzzling out whose arms went in what position when it was two women instead of a woman and a man. It was a work in progress. They laughed.

“What are we dancing for?”

“To celebrate the first day of the rest of our lives. Isn’t that plenty of reason?”

“Plenty.”

Their noses brushed. They kissed. They sang. They laughed some more. They swayed in front of the fireplace, safe in their balmy sanctuary while snow fell outside in torrents, painting the world in ice.

Bernie had told Marcus the truth at least. She was going to be happy here. She already was.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from “Falling Slowly” by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova. Yes, the song from Once. Yes, I listened to this endlessly while writing this story.


End file.
